Auto dealers, retailer & buyers all at one place, CarDekho.com

Cardekho.com, an online marketplace that goes way beyond facts and figures and helps you explore the glamorous and exotic world of cars. A one-stop-shop for all whether it be a retailer, a dealer or a buyer.

 

During the Indian Retail and eRetail Congress and Awards 2015, Umang Kumar, President, CarDekho.com & CEO, Gaadi.com spoke to Retailer Media on the company's future aspiration and industry stipulation.

 

Can you talk to us about Cardekho.com and the business model?

Our business model is primarily to monetise either new car buyers or used car buyers. We make money either from advertising through OEMs or on lead generation for new car dealers and OEMs. 

On the used car side of the business, we monetise through listings, where retailers and dealers pay us to list their cars for sale. Beyond that now we are diversifying into new products for the retailers to sell.

 

What were the initial challenges that you faced while rooting this business into the Indian market?

Challenges are always there in terms of growth. It's easier to scale the OEM side of the business where it's more of a corporate B2B sale. But on the retail side of the business, the cost of selling itself is very significant and given the geographic reach and distribution endeavour, you have to build a massive salea team across multiple geography to actually build and scale the business, this was one big challenge. 

The other challenge was getting more and more traffic and that comes down to having the best products in place as well as investing significantly on marketing.

 

What is the outreach of Cardekho.com?

Apart from the metro cities, we also have presence in tier II and III cities. Broadly for the used cars retailers, we have got manpower in about 14 cities across the country and we currently sell our products in 25 cities to used car dealers. On the new car dealers side, we have coverage of about 18-20 cities and through the course of this year we are looking forward to ramp up to about 45 cities through a direct sales force. 

 

How has the eCommerce market helped Cardekho.com?

We are not a complete player in the eComerce market. We are more into the classified market. If you monetise demand you do a transaction oriented business and if you monetise intent you run more of a supply business. So, in terms of growth we are in a very early stage of the auto retail business in online. But on the new car side of the business, we broadly work very closely with about 6-7 OEMs and we account for anything between 15-20% of their total sales in India and that is the power of digital today

 

Who are your market-rivals and how is Cardekho.com better than them?

There are two sets of rivals for us. In the new car business, frankly, we do not have a direct rival yet, we are outright number one. Carwaale.com to an extent can be a competitor.

But the used cars side of the business is a lot more competitive. CarTrade.com is there but they are well behind us, less than half our size. And then we compete with Horizontals, who are also trying to build out an auto- vertical on their portal same as sites like OLX and Quickr.

 

What is your take on the mobile-only strategy that is  leaving behind the eCommerce?

I don't think mobile has left behind the eCommerce in any shape or form. I think that's a very subjective call basis a particular company. Mobile is definitely increasing in the future. Around 60% of our traffic today comes from mobile which is likely to scale up to 70%. At some point of time, even for us, mobile will be far more significant than desktops. Desktop research is still important in high value categories, where people spend some more time researching maybe on a computer. So, the question, are we going to go only-mobile anytime soon, no. Probably in our industry that shift is 3-4 years away and the goal for every business is to build for the future, there is no point building for today.

 

How was your experience with The Indian Retail Congress 2015?

Excellent, the last couple of days, I enjoyed my time over here and interacted with quite a few people as well, great job done!