Sharemac - my excavator is your excavator!
January 18, 2019
A founding team of students and alumni of Jacobs University Bremen and their professor are launching the online platform Sharemac for renting construction machinery at the hanseBAU trade fair in Bremen, Germany.
Whether excavators, wheel loaders or cranes: construction machines are expensive, but often stand around unused in the companies - while on other construction sites these machines are desperately needed. So why not rent them out? This is the basic idea behind the Sharemac platform, which will be launched at the hanseBAU trade fair on 18 January. It was developed by a team of international students from Jacobs University led by Manuel Kimanov and Rezi Chikviladze and accompanied by Sven Voelpel, Professor of Business Administration at Jacobs University.
In one of his seminars at Jacobs University, Voelpel gave his students the task of developing new business models for the sharing economy. Kimanov and Chikviladze found out that companies often use their construction machinery only half the time, and that cranes are standing unused on construction yards 75 percent of the time. The startup now makes this potential available to other construction companies and private users with the online platform Sharemac (www.sharemac.de ).
The advantages of Sharemac are obvious: the lessors achieve an additional source of income, the lessees have a cost-effective rental opportunity, bottlenecks such as a short-term order can easily be overcome. Sven Voelpel, the chairman of the young company which is at home on the campus of Jacobs University, speaks of a "win-win situation".
, Sharemac - my excavator is your excavator! (Source: Sharemac)The team has compiled a database with over 32,000 construction machines from various manufacturers, including performance data. Each user of the platform can select the desired equipment in the twinkling of an eye. Important documents such as the rental contract and handover protocol are automatically sent by the system, and transport and insurance can be booked as an option. Membership in the Sharemac network is free of charge. Only a 4 to 8 percent rental fee is charged per transaction, and this fee is shared between the lessee and the lessor.
Sharemac is met with great interest in the construction industry: "We save empty kilometers. This is a great story for us," says Oliver Schilling, authorized signatory of W&F Franke Schwerlast Internationale Spedition GmbH. "It is important that the right equipment is in the right place at the right time," adds Jens Richter, foreman at August Reiners. "Sharemac makes that possible. And Tim Reiners, CEO of the Hegemann Group, emphasizes: "We want to participate in Sharemac in order to generate additional income, create synergies in our fleet and be able to plan better. All this is offered by Sharemac's new, innovative platform".
The three founders Chairman Prof. Dr. Sven Voelpel, Manuel Kimanov as CEO and Rezi Chikviladze as COO agree that "Sharemac has evolved from an academic idea at Jacobs University to an innovative and practical solution to one of the biggest challenges facing the construction industry - digitization".
More information:
https://www.sharemac.de/de/about-us