Though most of the regular players in the luxury car rental business are people who have made their pile in the car rental industry for decades, the story of how Opulenze cars came into being is a little different. Two years ago, Ronald and three of his classmates had no idea what they would do after attaining a degree in social work, but had a love for big, fancy, expensive cars.
“We would keep talking about the kind of cars that we would buy someday, until it struck me that we could actually buy one and rent it to pay the EMIs,” recounts Ronald. Skeptical to say the least, the four of them actually went to a Mercedes Benz showroom fully expecting to be shown the door unceremoniously. “Instead, we were very surprised about how easy the procedure was. It was almost the same at the BMW showroom too,” he adds.
With three of them landing HR jobs and Ronald running an arts education business, they managed to ‘beg, steal and borrow’ `35 lakh to make the down payments on a Mercedes Benz C - Class and a BMW 5 series. “We are still making the payments and juggling the business with our jobs, but we know that there is a future here,” he says with pride. Recently, their cars were used by plenty of IPL stars to make celebrity appearances and one of them is even being used by actor-director S J Suryah in his upcoming flick, Isai.
With their brochure showing the availability of Jaguars, Land Rovers and even the uber-expensive Rolls Royce, Roland reveals that this is possible through strategic tie-ups. “There are people who lease their cars out for use and we have deals with the owner of a Jaguar XJS and a few others to lease us the vehicles when needed,” he says. Expansion may be every entrepreneur’s dream, but Ronald’s dream is XXXL – to buy an old Bentley or Rolls Royce stretch limo second hand and restore it to vintage condition.
Comments
0 comment