Access is the new ownership

Introduction:

How do you travel now? probably by some ride-sharing app. Where are you staying? probably in a nice furnished flat on rent. This is the age of access, rather than ownership. Nowadays Access to ownership means much more than owning resources completely. The major reason behind this is that young generations, especially millennials have found that sharing economy is far better than ownership.Changing esteems and needs have driven us from hyper-utilization in the 21st century to communitarian utilization in the 21st century. We will explore the different directions of this trend in this article.

How ownership is evolving:

To explain in short, my grandfather built a house in our hometown. The house was created by spending a fortune and it has stayed a family property since that time. While on the other hand, I stay in a nice, furnished flat and have complete access to this accommodation. This is the simplest way, ownership has changed over the time.

Ownership, traditionally used to mean completely owning an asset. In this setting, each and every object is owned by someone specifically or some organization in particular. But with the increasing need of different types of properties and assets, people started the idea of sharing the same property around and thus the access has become a more important perspective than the ownership. In the 21st century, ownership has become all about access. Everything, starting from cars, houses, gadgets to furniture, has now become sharing basis, and the idea of owning the object has become totally obsolete, with the focus being using the object only when needed.

Although sharing resources is not a new thing but this wave of new ownership is coming now all thanks to simplified techniques, ease of access within the fingertip using a smartphone applications and the use of big data by the companies to facilitate the vast arrays of services making this ecosystem stay afloat. The changed perceptions of people is also another important fact. Adults in the US who are familiar with the sharing economy are already changing their perception of ownership: 81% think that it’s less costly to share than own things, 43 % think that ownership is a burden, and 57 % agree that access is the new ownership. From $15 billion in 2015, the sharing economy market is expected to grow to a whopping $335 billion in 2025,according to Forbes. This large business opportunity is gradually attracting more and more businessmen,innovators and entrepreneurs to invest. For this reason, competition is ever increasing, providing good services in less prices and increased quality of services.

Different business model helping the idea:

Like many revolutionary ideas, the idea of ownership via access also has been widely used and promoted by many startups in fields like automobiles, rental industries and many others. While some of the organisations own a large number of objects and incidentally loan their products to clients, others create a platform to encourage "distributed" rentals where private people share property among themselves in return for cash. One other different model in the same field is that the companies don’t own the objects, but they directly help the property sharing, and performs with the clients as owner, while sharing the revenues with the actual owners. The popular ride sharing apps Uber and ola can be considered like this. Renchant wants to revolutionize the way people give their flat on rent and take the flats on rent with the help of technology.

The better choice for personal finance:

Nowadays people are always searching for new ways to save money because of economic constraints and different financial goals to fulfil. In these types of situations, most of the owners are also considering sharing of underutilized physical properties as 2nd type of income and the people who are opting to use them are also finding this sharing economy as a part of saving money.

Conclusion:

Till now, the idea of access to ownership is in the nascent stage in India. The reasons being local problems, lack of consumer protections, lack of excess employment like development sectors and many others. But, in short, it is a change which is going to provide the people who knows and agrees to share rather than keeping their properties to themselves. So, without a doubt, we can say, Sharing economy and access to shared ownership is clearly the way the future will look like. Till now, the idea of access to ownership is in the nascent stage in India. The reasons being local problems, lack of consumer protections, lack of excess employment like development sectors and many others. But, in short, it is a change which is going to provide the people who knows and agrees to share rather than keeping their properties to themselves. So, without a doubt, we can say, Sharing economy and access to shared ownership is clearly the way the future will look like.