This Bengaluru Based Startup is Making the Car Buying Process Transparent, Convenient and Hassle-free

We are publishing an interview of Mr. Raghuram Kote, Co-founder, MyCarAndBike.

About the founders
Raghurama Kote: He is a a GenX entrepreneur with a successful track record of building global businesses, successfully exited and has been part of the Indian IT growth story.He was the Co-founder of Ivega, Founder and CEO of Iteamic (Acquired by CIBER), President of India for NYSE-listed CIBER Inc and currently co-founder and COO of Opteamix LLC.

Raghavendra Chandrappa: He is an astute automobile industry leader with experience in New Car Sales, Services, Lease Financing, Loans and Insurance. He was the regional head of ALD Automotive a 100% subsidiary of the Société Générale Group and was the founder of ServiceMyKar, which was acquired by MyCarAndBike in 2016.

Tony Hadzi: A veteran IT entrepreneur who has built global services companies across the world, successfully exited and is a true believer of the Indian growth story. Co-founder of Q Data, EVP of CIBER Inc’s $600 mn North American business, and currently Co-founder and CEO of Opteamix LLC.

Muki Regunathan: A design thinker and digital marketing expert, Muki is the Founder & CEO of Pepper Square, one of India’s finest digital agencies. An active angel investor with many startups, Muki leverages his 22 years of experience in design thinking, marketing, technology and human connect. He is a sought-after speaker at many conferences.

What is the problem you are trying to solve?
We are making the car buying process transparent, convenient and hassle-free. The traditional way of buying cars has left people looking for better options to make the process efficient. With non-transparent deals, the lack of negotiating skills and the unawareness of the availability of discounts on new cars, MyCarAndBike is here to offer its customers ‘The Solution’. It becomes a tedious job to go from one dealer to another in the hope of getting better quotes. Negotiating is not everyone’s forte which makes it even more difficult to get the car you want at the price you want. Case in point being saving time, effort and energy. MyCarAndBike makes an interesting case for a smart and easy way to undo the bottlenecks of car buying in India. The automobile ecosystem, as suggested by leading experts, is up for a stir and digital automotive retail is slowly but paving way to the future.

What is the uniqueness about your Startup? 

• The ability to get multiple dealer quotes across all brands.
• A bidding algo at the dealer’s end ensures fair bidding, enabling us to provide our users with the most competitive quotes.
• A near instant process, allowing our clients to get the best bids within 24-48 hours.
• We create a simplified process of reaching out to multiple dealers and getting out the best quotes. Given the fact that there are many buyers looking to book a new car on this platform, when MyCarandBike approaches a dealer, he treats it as a group booking, leading to fabulous deals that an individual will otherwise not have access to. This platform has been able to gain the trust of their customers by offering transparency which is a frequent issue of concern when it comes to getting the right price from the dealers.
• MyCarAndBike’s advanced bidding algorithm creates the much-needed impetus in the car buying market by allowing dealers to bid for every enquiry by a customer made on the digital platform. As a result, an interested car buyer, basis his enquiry, gets the best deals and pricing for the car of his choice, making the whole process simple, transparent and effective in a short span. The volumes of genuine enquiries that MyCarAndBike generates, makes it a preferred choice for dealers aiding to the ‘group-buy’ sentiment. In a month, every brand enjoys tons of buyers for most of its variants, thereby allowing the platform to squeeze the maximum benefits and passing it on to the customers. Greater volumes for dealers and sweetened deals for the customers makes it a complete win-win affair.

What is the revenue model? Explain your thought process. 
Our revenue model is a commission and volume based incentive with dealers, insurance companies and also from banks. We follow a Premium model. Our motto is to ease the burden of our customers but ensuring them the minimum of what they should pay to buy the car of their choice.

Who are the consumers that you are targeting? How is this going to affect them? 
Millennials, Gen X and Gen Y. Everyone who is out there to buy a car and buy want to it at the best price is potentially our customer.

What is the big picture of your startup? Will it lead to something bigger? If so, how? 
We want to be the Amazon of car buying in the automotive industry by expanding our platform to different geographies as we have a strong surge of interest from other states as well.

What is the success story of your startup in your own words? 
Being a start-up that is just about a year old, we have a GMV value of INR 20 crores. We get close to 1000 enquiries every month and our bookings range from anywhere between 60-100 on a month on month basis.

Thanks Mr. Raghuram. Best of luck!