California startup, Fair.com, wants to change the tides of the car market by providing cheap and easy options for people to lease vehicles instead of buying them — and yesterday was an acceleration in the right direction.
On Thursday, Fair raised a massive Series B funding round of $385m (led by, who else, SoftBank) to take its business global.
Founded in 2016, the car-subscription service buys used vehicles from dealerships and rents them from an app for a monthly fee.
Fair has worked with Uber, which sold Fair its $400m leasing portfolio, to supply its drivers with vehicles. Now, the company hopes to scale its business 10-fold by minting more ridesharing partnerships in other markets.
The car leasing company is already in 15 states and 26 markets in the US (reportedly adding a new city every week), with more than 20k lease agreements from users to date.
SoftBank’s got some hard tickle tied up in the rideshare market, backing not only Uber but also Getaround in the US, Didi in China, Grab in Southeast Asia, Ola in India and more.
The company plans to use Fair to scale those businesses by helping connect more drivers with fairly priced vehicles in a swift timeframe.
While Fair wouldn’t comment on its exact valuation, the round puts the total equity raised in Fair at around $500m; some speculate the company’s valuation to be north of $1B.