Well known and practiced in the fields of car and apartment sharing, the booming sharing economy also applies to the global yacht rental market. Pioneering this trend is Anchor.Travel, a Russian startup launched last year by Russian entrepreneurs Sergei Medvedev and Stanislav Kharlamov.
Competing with the American Boatbound.com and the French Sailsharing.com, Anchor.Travel has a database interface that uses a map with the yachts positioned in their various locations.
As a result of this concept, a client can choose a vessel and a corresponding travel itinerary within seconds. At the moment Anchor.Travel’s database consists of 96 boats, but the company plans to bring that number up to 2,000-3,000 by the end of 2015.
The market is stuck in place
“For the last five years I’ve been sailing rather actively,” says Medvedev. “The boat rental market today has been stuck somewhere since the beginning of the 2000s as the booking process takes place manually. To rent a yacht I have to spend about two weeks.”
According to Medvedev, the world charter boat market consists of approximately 15,000 units, with a total value of about $500 million. Anchor.Travel’s commission is 10 percent, which is up to 2.5 times lower than the market average. This lower markup is possible because superfluous steps are removed from the client-boat owner chain.
Medvedev says that Anchor.Travel charges an average of 2,500 euros to rent a yacht for a week. The price depends on the boat’s age, size and the season. Medvedev and Kharlamov plan to reach a monthly figure of 100-150 boat rentals per week by the end of 2015 with annual revenue of about $1.1 million.
The Russian startup intends to operate globally, because as Medvedev points out the Russian fleet does not even contain 100 boats. The entrepreneurs will promote their service internationally through search engines, contextual advertising, specialized publications and social media networks.
By 2018 Anchor.Travel intends to occupy seven percent of the world yacht and motorboat rental market and bring in $6 million annually.
Anchor.Travel has been backed by Impulse VC, an investment fund launched in October 2013 and backed by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. The entity includes a venture fund and an incubator. Its latest investment, in December last year, went to Top Delivery, a provider of e-commerce shipment services on the domestic market.
This story is based on an article published by Russia Beyond The Headlines, an international source of political, business and cultural news and analysis.
