1. What were the earliest challenges of building a mobility platform in Dubai, and how did you turn being ‘cash poor’ into an advantage?
Dubai was a fairly straightforward launchpad – a huge open market opportunity with fragmented inventory, and an industry that was still largely offline. We strategically decided to launch all the products across the board, which means not limited to daily or weekly rentals but to expand the offering to Monthly, lease flex & offer cars up to 36 months. This made it a unique all-in-one platform for all the services.
It was also a very thought-after strategy not to raise capital in the early days but stay focused building a platform that’s funded by paying customers. That “cash-poor” not really having acquired 500+ cars on road in the first 90 days of its launch is a perfect example of a service market fit – building a digital-first, asset-light platform that aggregated inventory from OEMs and dealerships, and scaled without owning vehicles. It also helped us in being lean, made us sharper, more creative, agile and more resilient.
2. You’ve scaled to over 1.5 million customers and more than $1B in assets under management. To what do you attribute that growth, especially in such a capital-intensive industry?
We grew by building a platform that works for both sides of the ecosystem that is customers and suppliers. Customers get on-demand access to dealership’s well-maintained & unique inventory that was never possible before with access from short-term to long-term leasing, or monthly flexi lease all in one place.
For OEMs and dealerships it opened a new revenue vertical with digital channel access to deploy their idle & unsold inventory. Our growth has come from staying capital-efficient, customer-centric, and focused on unit economics over vanity metrics.
3. Why is now the right time to enter the UK market, and what unmet needs or market gaps do you believe SelfDrive is uniquely positioned to solve?
The consumer behavior changes & we see a high increase in digital platform adoption with increase in cost of living hits UK and large segment of customers are rethinking car ownership. As we identify a huge gap between rental that’s 1 day to 28 days and leasing that starts 24 to 48 months services.
SelfDrive Mobility is built for this moment as we offer access instead of ownership, flexibility instead of lock-ins, and everything is mobile-first. Whether it’s a one-day drive, a monthly flexi lease, or our LeasePro model that offers brand new cars delivered to you across UK, we’re bridging the gap between traditional rentals and today’s demand.
4. How has SelfDrive reimagined the car rental model in a way that meets the needs of today’s digital consumer?
We’ve removed the paperwork, waiting lines, and rigid contracts. Through SelfDrive Mobility UK, users can browse real-time inventory, filter by brand or duration, with approvals instantly, cutting down long waiting times on cars, with a single motto to get you into your cars in hours & not in weeks.
You can rent by the day, subscribe monthly, or opt into LeasePro and own it over time. We’re not a rental company, we’re a digital mobility partner offering choice, control, flexibility and convenience.
5. You’ve warned about the risks of oversupply and underutilisation in the vehicle market. How does your dynamic subscription model address both issues?
Traditional models keep fleets static and underused. Our model is dynamic, we match supply to real-time demand using technology.
A vehicle can switch between daily rental, subscription, or LeasePro depending on market signals. That way, inventory is always productive, and customers always have access to what they need. It’s efficient. With data science we identify the make & models & region-based consumption that lets OEM / Dealers plan their inventory better, breaking the uncertainty and future-proofing for both users and our OEM/dealer partners.
6. SelfDrive has grown without relying on traditional venture capital. How have you managed funding and scaling in an industry where upfront costs can be steep?
We chose to build a business with revenue before investment. Our partnerships with OEMs and dealerships allowed us to scale without owning the vehicles ourselves.
We are not a marketplace that would host one make & model from 5 different vendors. We work on a OEM – Dealer structure that means the entire business is shared direct to the dealer partners. That lets us monetise fast, stay lean, and reinvest early profits into platform growth. That’s allowed us to expand across markets — from the UAE to Turkey to the UK — without diluting the company or compromising on profitability.
7. What lessons from scaling SelfDrive in the UAE and GCC are proving most relevant, or most challenging, in the UK market?
Relevant lessons: Stay asset-light, move fast and localise the experience.
The challenges? Navigating a more mature regulatory landscape and a different pace of customer acquisition. In the GCC, mobile-first adoption happened quickly. In the UK, trust and brand credibility matter more which is why partnerships with established OEMs and dealerships are key to our UK rollout strategy.
8. Navigating compliance and regulatory environments across countries is notoriously difficult. How did you approach cross-border expansion without compromising speed or innovation?
We built compliance into our product architecture. KYC, insurance, local requirements — it’s all integrated in-market from day one.
We don’t cut corners, but strongly believe in building a strong technology core and building it fast. And we rely heavily on legal, insurance, and operational partners within each region to ensure we’re moving with confidence, not assumptions.
9. You’ve built an asset-light, AI-driven platform in a highly traditional space. What were the key product or operational decisions that allowed you to stay lean and still scale?
We’re not in the business of owning fleets, we’re in the business of enabling mobility access at scale. That shift in mindset drove our entire strategy.
We built SelfDrive as a mobility tech company, not a rental agency. Our platform aggregates inventory from OEMs and dealerships, deploys it dynamically, and optimises utilization across short-term rental, subscription, and rent-to-own. Staying asset-light means we scale faster, enter new markets quicker, and remain resilient in downturns.
10. What would you say UK startups could learn from the entrepreneurial mindset or ecosystem in the UAE? And vice versa?
The UAE has built one of the most agile, pro-innovation ecosystems in the world. Startups in the UK can learn from the UAE’s bold, fast-paced approach to execution where government and private sector work hand-in-hand to enable rapid scale.
At the same time, the UK offers deep institutional knowledge around areas like ESG frameworks, data privacy, and consumer governance which are increasingly becoming global standards. At SelfDrive Mobility, we take the best of both: UAE’s visionary drive and the UK’s structured depth.
