SK sells Turo stake to spur investment in Southeast Asian mobility market

[Photo provided by SK]

SK Inc., the holding company of SK Group, plans to speed up expansion of its car-sharing business in Southeast Asia based on its mobility investment experience in the U.S.

The company on Thursday announced that it has signed a contract to sell its entire stake in peer-to-peer car-sharing platform Turo for $67.5 million.

SK purchased the stake for $35 million in 2017, and the deal resulted in a return on investment of 121 percent over five years. The deal is expected to be completed in the first half of this year.

Turo, founded in 2009 in San Francisco, is the world’s largest P2P car-sharing platform, with services available in more than 10,000 cities in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Unlike companies that rent company-owned cars, Turo’s peer-to-peer model allows individuals to share their personal cars, resulting in affordable service prices compared to traditional car rental companies.

SK plans to strengthen its investment in car-sharing and electric vehicle charging platforms in the domestic and Southeast Asian markets by using its investment proceeds.

SK plans to grow Socar Mobility Malaysia into a leading mobility platform in Southeast Asia.

SK jointly established Socar Mobility Malaysia, with Socar Korea in 2017 and acquired an additional stake in 2020 to gain control of the joint venture.

Today, Socar Mobility Malaysia is a top ride-sharing platform in Malaysia with over 1.9 million members and a 90 percent market share.

SK combined Socar’s B2C ride-sharing business model with U.S. Trevo’s person-to-person ride-sharing model and the driver-for-hire service model from Korean company Buddy Driver to form Socar Mobility Malaysia, which also expanded into Indonesia in 2020.