70% of 3 year old car-owners do not have service-cover: Daksh Sharma

Want to book a cab? There is an app. Want to order food? There is an app and the list goes on and on! In this technology-enabled planet, mobile applications have made our lives far easier than we could have ever thought of. This evolution of technology has given us the convenience of getting things done on our fingertips.

Many on-demand mobile applications have emerged in the recent past and have left us amused with its comprehensive services. Now, how about an app that helps you call mechanics for your car anytime and anyplace? Zaiuto is an on-demand integrated car care app envisioned to provide 24 X 7 assistance to car owners for a hassle free driving experience.

Retailer Media caught up with Daksh Sharma, Founding Partner, Zaiuto to know more about this road side assistance services and how it aspires to move up the value chain by offering all car care services across key cities in India.

Share your background. Your education and whether entrepreneurship was something you always wanted to do?
My name is Daksh Sharma. Company's co-founder Sunny Jindal and I have been entrepreneurs before. Zaiuto is our second venture. Prior to this, we started digital agency Iffort, which provides strategic digital marketing services to brands across spectrum. Based out of Noida, Iffort was started in 2010 and is now a 30 member agency. We have also worked in IT Services organizations across various roles and have a cumulative experience of 20+ years between the two of us.

How was the idea of your Start-up conceptualised? What is the need you are addressing in the market?
As they say, most of the ideas are born from a personal pain-point and in the case of Zaiuto it was not different. I own a 3 year old car and like most car owners had an RSA membership. There were many occasions when my car had a breakdown or had a flat-tyre. For these cases, requesting assistance via my RSA was quite a task. It required endless waiting at the call-centre and after the entire wait, had to guide the mechanic to my location. Which is where we asked ourselves, can we improve the experience of requesting help when you car breaks-down or needs to be serviced? That’s where Zaiuto was born.

We help car-owner directly communicate by sending requests to our network nearby partner workshops; more simply we are uberizing the service industry in an on-demand economy.

Is there a story behind the name, you have given to your business 
Zaiuto, pronounced as /Za-you-tow or Za-you-toe/ is derived from the Italian word, ‘Aiuto’ which means help in English. Take out the ‘i’ and the word becomes auto, our industry category. We wanted to keep the name short, appealing and make it sound like an app which is why ‘Zaiuto’ happened. Our litmus test was when our partner mechanics had to pronounce the name and while there were initial difficulties; they got it perfectly right after a couple of rounds.

Who is your target consumer? Could you please share how you have detailed your consumer?
We are targeting the after-sales market and are looking at a consumer who has a 2+ year old car. Typically, more than 70% of the car-owners with more than 3 year old cars do not have a service-cover. That’s the market are targeting.

What are your future distribution plans?
We are looking at institutional tie-ups to target the corporate customer. Once we scale our services, the app will be offered as an API for usage across other automobile industry verticals for instance by automobile insurance players.

What is your team size? What is your office culture like? 
We are a team size of 8 actually distributed between a small office in Bengaluru and a shared office at Iffort. The office culture a both locations, represents a typical start-up. You would see everything from bean-bags to chit-chats at the in house CCD café machine.

What has been your A-ha Moment in the business? (The high point)
Too-early to comment on that, but in this little journey I would say the strategic alliance with San Francisco based startup, Zendrive is a key highlight. Zendrive is a leader in collision detection technology and we thank them for trusting us and partnering with us at an early stage.

What has been your biggest challenge so far in scaling -up? How are you addressing it? 
We are trying to organize an unorganised market and need to follow a protocol to ensure optimum quality services are delivered by our partner mechanic. That is both a challenge and an opportunity that needs to be addressed. 

How do you see growth scenario is this business? What are your future scale-up plans?
We have launched our services in Noida and Greater Noida and are now looking to scale our presence across Delhi/NCR and Bengaluru.