In 2018, young entrepreneur Abdulkader Almkinzy shook up the car rental market in Saudi Arabia by launching online platform Telgani. The aggregator has helped take rental services in the country to a whole new level.
As Saudi Arabia opens up to the world, entrepreneurs are making it easier than ever to explore this vast and ancient land. Since 2018, when young entrepreneur Abdulkader Almkinzy and his co-founder Ali Alfehaid launched online rental platform Telgani, visitors and locals have been able to order a vehicle in just a couple of clicks and have it delivered to their doorstep within an hour.
“It used to be very hard to hire a car and almost impossible for a rental car to be delivered to your home,” Almkinzy remembers. “What we did with Telgani was to cut through all the red tape. Almost anywhere you are, you can now rent a car from our platform in under two minutes.”
Telgani is the largest car rental aggregator in the country. Partnering with some of the biggest names in the rental industry, the company delivers cars to consumers and businesses at a significant discount compared to prices charged in branch offices.
“We are building a more convenient, efficient, and sustainable car rental industry”
Abdulkader Almkinzy, Founder and CEO, Telgani
Telgani experienced a surge in demand during the pandemic, when people were reluctant to visit rental offices to hire cars. The company’s revenues have risen threefold every year since 2019. Telgani now has more than one million users.
“For our customers, we guarantee price, quality, and convenience,” Almkinzy says.
Because most local residents own at least one car, Telgani introduced leasing and car subscription to businesses and to expats working in the country. For example, it provides four-wheel-drive vehicles to the growing numbers of film production crews operating in Saudi Arabia and to tour companies exploring the ancient ruins of AlUla.
Almkinzy’s ambitions extend well beyond delivering cars to businesses, expats, and tourists. Telgani wants to help modernize urban mobility in the country and put car transport on a more sustainable footing. “Our goal is to be the first car rental aggregator in Saudi Arabia to deliver electric vehicles to our customers,” Almkinzy says. “Our country is growing rapidly, and we want to help it meet all the mobility challenges that it faces.”
What is Telgani doing differently from other car rental brands?
Our focus is convenience. Telgani is the most convenient platform for mobility. We also have an outstanding logistics system which ensures fast delivery of the car to the customer. We are investing a lot in technology to provide this convenience. Our international service providers told us that it would be too expensive to deliver cars straight to our customers. We told them that our data said otherwise, and we were proved right.
In addition to delivering the car to the customer, we also guarantee the best price. If a customer can find a similar car in the local office, we will pay the difference and give them a 20% discount. This never happens. We always aim to be at least 5% cheaper than the walk-in prices or those found on any other platform.
How is demand for leased cars changing in Saudi Arabia?
We are seeing tremendous growth in demand from the younger generation. They do not need to own a car, so they are leasing cars for one or two years. With Telgani, they can replace their car anytime and anyplace they want. There is huge demand for this sort of flexible lease.
What is the secret to Telgani’s success?
We are a young company, but we have already earned a very good reputation. We always look at what will benefit our partners and our customers. We deal fairly with everybody. Everyone at Telgani is passionate about changing the mobility business. We have grown from four people at the beginning to nearly 40 people now. We are all working extremely hard to be the most convenient platform for mobility.
How did the semiconductor shortage affect Telgani?
It affected everybody, because there were significantly fewer cars available at the dealerships. At Telgani, we were able to turn this to our advantage and support our corporate clients. We consolidated orders for vehicles from small companies, which meant that we were able to place much larger orders at car dealerships. Our corporate customers received the cars faster than they would have if they had gone to the dealers individually.
What new services are you planning to introduce?
We are continuing to focus on technology. We are increasing our use of artificial intelligence to help us forecast demand for different types of cars.
We plan to launch a platform that will help car rental companies to sell their fleets through our partners. We will integrate with other sales websites to display cars for sale when they reach the end of their rental life.
Sustainability is also very important to us. We want to participate in the development of smart cities in the Red Sea region. In these cities, all the cars will be electric.
How are you funding your growth?
Institutional funds and a major car distributor have invested in us. In our next round, we aim to raise funds from international investors. We will be participating in major summits in Europe and the U.S. and we will build our relationships with the global investment community. We will also be speaking at the Web Summit in Lisbon.
What plans do you have for international growth?
We want to expand in the nearby Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. We are also looking to expand in Egypt. In the Egyptian car rental sector, there are similar problems with customer service, and we think we can help solve those. It is another fast-growing economy and another promising market for Telgani
Published as branded content in WIRED magazine
