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- 🤯 SOCAR Malaysia Won 90% of the Market. Then It Shut Down.
🤯 SOCAR Malaysia Won 90% of the Market. Then It Shut Down.
How SOCAR won 90% of Malaysian car-sharing with a fleet it owned, then shut down after 8 years while TREVO, its asset-light marketplace, lived on.
Admond Lee
October 18, 2026
P.S. Glints ran 1 newsletter ad and 1 advertorial with us on hiring across Southeast Asia. 25,172 views, 173 clicks, and 40+ downloads of its hiring guide.
Hey Founders,
Welcome to The Runway Ventures — a weekly newsletter where I deep dive into failed startup stories to help you become the top 1% founder by learning from their mistakes with actionable insights.
Today's story is about a Korean-backed car-sharing app that captured 90% of Malaysia's market with 1.9M members but never made money. Let's get to it! 🚀🚀
Today at a Glance:
☠️ 1 Failed Startup → SOCAR
⚠️ 2 Mistakes → Kept growing an owned fleet while losing money
🧠 3 Lessons Learned → The side bet you build reveals your real strategy
🔗 The Runway Insights → 38 things we've learned about building AI products
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar → Salary Hero raises $7.6M (Series A) to expand earned wage access into Malaysia
☠️ 1 Failed Startup: SOCAR
🚀 The Rise of SOCAR
🇲🇾 Founded as a joint venture between South Korea's SK Inc. and SOCAR Inc. in 2017, with Leon Sing Foong leading as launch CEO, SOCAR Malaysia was an app-based car-sharing service that let anyone unlock and drive a car by the hour — no paperwork, no branch visit, no key handover.
🕺🏻 Founders’ Story
SOCAR Malaysia wasn't a founder-garage story. It was SK Group's bet on exporting Korea's car-sharing model to Southeast Asia — with the Klang Valley as the testing ground.
To run it, they recruited Leon Sing Foong, an Oxford grad fresh from a 4-year run as General Manager of Uber Malaysia and Thailand.
🔑 The thesis was simple → liberate Malaysians from the burden of car ownership and give them something between Grab and Hertz.
The Problem — 🚗 Owning a car in Malaysia was expensive and inflexible, but there was no quick in-between option.
93% of Malaysian households owned at least one car — and owning one meant loan payments, insurance, parking, and maintenance
Traditional car rentals meant branch visits, paperwork, physical keys, and minimum day-long bookings
The Solution — 📱 SOCAR built a keyless, app-based car-sharing service with vehicles parked all over the Klang Valley.
Rentals from 30 minutes to monthly subscriptions, starting at RM8 per hour
1,000+ "SOCAR Zones" placed in condos, malls, and transit hubs — not centralised at airports or branches
Self-service onboarding via the app: upload ID, selfie, licence, done
A fleet that ran from Perodua Axia compacts to MINI Coopers and BMWs
🇲🇾🚘 In short, SOCAR was like Grab, except you drove the car yourself.
 | 🚀 SOCAR launched in January 2018 with 240 cars and roughly 100 zones in the Klang Valley. Within a year, the fleet had more than tripled. Within 2 years, it crossed 2,000 vehicles. |
💰 In February 2020, SOCAR raised an $18 million (Series A) at a $118 million valuation. Then in September 2021, it closed an up-to-$55 million (Series B) led by EastBridge Partners and Sime Darby at a $213 million valuation.
🏔️ Between 2021 and 2023, SOCAR Malaysia:
had 1.9 million registered members
held 90%+ market share in Malaysian car-sharing (company-reported)
operated 2,200+ vehicles across 36 car models
ran 1,000+ SOCAR Zones across KL, Penang, Johor, Ipoh, and Melaka
was valued at US$213 million at Series B
🚗🚙🚗🚙 SOCAR had basically become the only name in Malaysian car-sharing. Every condo, every mall, every LRT station seemed to have a parked SOCAR waiting. The future looked locked in.
📉 The Fall of SOCAR
But owning 90% of a market is not the same as owning a business that makes money.
Behind the 1.9 million members and the dominant brand, SOCAR was losing money. It owned its cars, so it had to finance, park, insure, maintain, clean, and reposition every one of them. And it never published what a single car earned.
Then the stock-market listing its investors had made a condition of their money never happened.
📌 Here’s what happened to SOCAR:
New Socar subscription purchases are no longer available. Existing subscriptions will be discontinued as part of the closure process. Any eligible remaining value will be refunded on a prorated basis.
🚗🚘 From 240 cars to 2,000 — in 2 years
23 Mar 2017 — SOCAR Mobility Malaysia incorporated as a 60:40 joint venture between SK Inc. and SOCAR Inc. of South Korea.
Oct 2017 — Leon Sing Foong joined as launch CEO straight after leading Uber Malaysia and Thailand.
23 Jan 2018 — 🚗 Commercial launch in the Klang Valley with 240 cars, 4 car models, roughly 100 SOCAR Zones, and hourly rates from RM8.
Nov 2018 — 📈 Fleet more than tripled to 850 vehicles, all owned and operated by SOCAR, at 450 locations across KL and Johor Bahru.
20 Feb 2020 — 💰 Raised an $18 million (Series A) from Eugene PE and KH Energy at a $118 million valuation.
Feb 2020 — Launched TREVO, a P2P marketplace subsidiary where private owners could list their own cars.
2020 — 🏛️ SK Inc. bought a further 29% from Korean SOCAR, turning the JV into an SK-controlled subsidiary.
16 Sep 2021 — 💰💰 Announced an up-to-$55 million (Series B) from EastBridge Partners and Sime Darby at a $213 million valuation. 60% upfront, 40% on agreed conditions.
Oct 2021 — 👋🏻 Founding CEO Leon Sing Foong left. He joined Binance as Head of APAC in January 2022.
1 Aug 2022 — Shylendra Nathan appointed CEO to oversee both SOCAR and TREVO.
16 Mar 2023 — 🏔️ SK publicly disclosed SOCAR had reached 1.9 million members and more than 90% market share.
💸 90% of the market. US$42M of negative equity.
End 2023 — 📉 SK began carrying its SOCAR Malaysia investment at zero.
2025 — SOCAR Malaysia lost about US$4.4M (KRW6.3 billion) on about US$11M of revenue. Its equity stood at about negative US$42M (KRW60 billion).
3 Aug 2026 — 💥 With no listing and no buyer for control, SK paid about US$6M, in its own zero-coupon convertible bonds, to buy out EastBridge and Eugene PE.
Eugene took about US$2M (KRW2.9 billion) in SK bonds for a stake it reportedly paid about US$15M (KRW17.7 billion) for.
Mid-Aug 2026 — 📧 Users received a notice: SOCAR would shut down on 31 August.
31 Aug 2026 — 🪦 SOCAR Malaysia officially ceased all B2C car-sharing operations after 8 years. TREVO continued as the surviving P2P platform.
🙏🏻SOCAR won the market but never made the numbers work.
They had the brand, the users, the fleet, the funding. What SOCAR never gave was a reason for shutting down. The numbers we can see tell most of it: the company lost about US$11M in 2019, before COVID, and was still losing about US$4M a year in 2025. The stock-market listing its investors were waiting for never came, and they left with far less than they put in.
The marketplace they built on the side, TREVO, owned no cars. It is the part still running.
Want to learn more about SOCAR’s downfall?
⚠️ 2 Mistakes
Mistake 1: Kept growing an owned fleet while losing money
We will utilise these funds to supercharge our vision of multiflex mobility and bring the convenience of car-sharing to more people across Southeast Asia.
Korean SOCAR's filing showed the Malaysian unit lost about US$11M (KRW12.7 billion) in 2019 — before COVID, with a fleet that passed 2,000 cars by January 2020. SOCAR said it owned and operated those cars itself.
Leadership raised more capital anyway. The $18M Series A was pitched on technology and new markets; the up-to-$55M Series B on technology, trust and safety, and TREVO. The fleet grew to 2,200+ across 36 models.
🤦🏻♂️ SOCAR never published utilisation or what a single car earned.
By 2025, it was still losing about US$4.4M a year on about US$11M of revenue, with about US$42M of negative equity — in a market it owned 90% of.
Mistake 2: Launched TREVO but kept the capital-heavy fleet running
Here's the part most people miss.
In February 2020 — the same month as the Series A — SOCAR launched TREVO, a peer-to-peer marketplace where private owners supplied the cars and paid for their upkeep.
So what did they do? The company ran both a capital-heavy fleet and a marketplace in parallel for years, under one CEO from 2022. One CEO, split attention — across 2 contradictory business models.
🥊 Here's the kicker: when SOCAR shut down on 31 August 2026, TREVO continued operating. The hedge became the survivor.
The asset-light alternative had existed in-house since February 2020. The capital-heavy model ran alongside it until shutdown.
🧠 3 Lessons Learned
Lesson 1: Fix unit economics before chasing market share
By FY2019 (pre-COVID, with the fleet pushing toward 2,000 cars), SOCAR booked a loss of about US$11M. Every car had to be financed, parked, insured and maintained. By its own count, SOCAR raised up to US$73M.
By 2025: about US$42M of negative equity.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
In asset-heavy models, more units don't fix a unit that loses money. If the first car doesn't pay for itself, the thousandth won't either.
Market share only matters when contribution margin per unit is positive. Dominance in a loss-making market is still a loss-making business.
🛠️ Operator Playbook:
🔍 Work out the break-even hours for one asset
Add up what one car (or machine, or kiosk) costs a month: the loan or depreciation, insurance, the parking bay, cleaning, servicing, and the staff time to move it.
Divide by your hourly price. Say a car costs RM1,500 a month and rents at RM8 an hour: it needs about 190 booked hours, roughly 6 hours every day, just to break even.
Put that next to the hours your cars are actually booked, location by location. A bay in a busy mall and a bay in a quiet condo are different businesses.
If most locations sit below break-even, stop adding cars until they don't.
📊 Price the asset-light version of your own business
SOCAR owned its cars; TREVO's hosts brought their own. Before you finance the next 100 assets, work out what the same 100 would earn if someone else owned them and you took a cut of each booking.
Ask: "If I ran this on someone else's balance sheet, what would I keep per booking?"
If that version keeps more, test it in one city before you buy the next batch.
Lesson 2: The side bet you build reveals your real strategy
In February 2020 (the same month SOCAR closed its Series A), leadership launched TREVO, a subsidiary running a peer-to-peer marketplace where private owners carried the car cost.
✌🏻 Both models ran in parallel; when SOCAR shut down in August 2026, TREVO kept operating. The hedge was the real strategy.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
Running 2 contradictory models in parallel splits capital, attention, and brand. In cash-burn categories, that's slower death.
If one business line consistently outperforms another on unit economics, treat it as the real strategy and move the capital.
🛠️ Operator Playbook:
🎯 Give each model its own P&L from day one
When you launch a 2nd model beside the first (a marketplace beside your own fleet, say), keep separate numbers for each: revenue, cost per booking, cash used, and headcount.
Split shared costs (the app, customer support, the CEO's time) by usage, so neither side quietly subsidises the other.
Every quarter, ask: "If we could fund only one next year, which would it be?"
Lesson 3: Plan how your investors will get their money out
EastBridge Partners and Eugene PE invested in SOCAR on condition of a qualified IPO.
The pandemic hurt results, the listing never happened, and a later attempt to sell control of the company also fell through. Then majority owner SK Inc. bought both out for about US$6M in its own zero-coupon convertible bonds — Eugene took about US$2M in SK bonds for a stake it reportedly paid about US$15M for.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
An IPO condition only covers the case where you list. Agree upfront what happens if you don't.
Most VC and PE funds have a fixed life, so each needs its exit by a set year.
🛠️ Operator Playbook:
📄 Read every exit clause before you sign
If the deal needs a qualified IPO, find out what qualifies: which exchange, what valuation, by when.
Check for redemption rights: can investors make the company buy back their shares after a set period? Note the year and amount.
Ask your lawyer: "If we haven't listed by the deadline, who can force a sale, and who pays?"
🧮 Add a no-IPO tab to your model
Assume you never list. Who could buy each investor out (a rival, another fund, your majority owner), and at what price?
Next to each lead investor, write the year their fund needs to exit.
If your majority owner is the only realistic buyer, agree now how a buyout gets priced, and whether it's paid in cash or bonds. The same buyer will set the price on your own shares.
🔗 The Runway Insights
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar
Salary Hero bags $7.6M (Series A) to expand earned wage access and financial health platform into Malaysia (More)
NEU Battery Materials closes $7.6M to scale LFP battery recycling at its Singapore plant (More)
Parallel Loop raises $6.6M (Seed) to connect AI with enterprise systems and workflows, led by 3one4 Capital (More)
Drylab secures $3M (Seed) to build AI research agents for life sciences, led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India (More)
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That’s all for today
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed today's issue. More than that, I hope you’ve learned some actionable tips to build and grow your business.
You can always write to me by simply replying to this newsletter and we can chat.
See you again next week.
- Admond
Disclaimer: The Runway Ventures content is for informational purposes only. Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed above belong solely to the author.
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