Buying a car is still a very emotional occasion for most Indian families. Carlelo, an online new car-buying platform founded by Gaurav Aggarwal (CEO) aims to make this experience even more hassle-free and seamless.
From selling 18 cars a month a year ago, it is targeting to process over 2,000 vehicles a month by March 2024.
The virtual multi-brand set-up allows it to be brand agnostic and helps customers discover passenger vehicles based on their budget and connect with the nearest dealer offering the best deal possible.
“Once the customer has finalised his purchase, he can speak to the dealer directly with the click-to-call feature. Our on-field guy then helps (with the association of Capri Global) and helps the customer through all the finance deals. We have around 1,800 people on-field who are actively helping people with new car loans and sales,” says Aggarwal.
“The Indian consumers want the best of all worlds. They do not want to let of the experience or joy of buying a new car, but at the same time, there is a need for hand-holding in terms of better price discovery or event test drive at home. The idea is to provide a plus one to the already existing steps,” he adds.
Many automakers globally are introducing the direct-to-consumer (D2C) model, which potentially could question the existence of the dealership model.
But Aggarwal is not worried as he believes, “The price point, negotiation, paperwork, documentation and the financing cannot be automated so easily in India.”
He says that the market and customer dynamics in India are quite unique, the D2C business model in the automotive space in China or other countries, cannot be simply replicated here.
Despite being a young company, Carlelo boasts of covering almost 95 percent of the passenger vehicle market in terms of brands, geographical reach, dealerships on board, etc.
The company’s business model lies on financing. This means whenever any customer wants to buy the car his financial needs, insurance and other services provide a margin to Carlelo.
The margin lies in the bulk negotiation with any brand or dealership and the revenue is proportionate to how many bank loans the company does and cars sold through the platform.
Interestingly, the company started full-fledged operations in April this year and has grown from selling 18 cars in the first month to around 300 cars last month.
“The average ticket size is around Rs 9 lakh. There are few customers in the Rs 16 lakh bracket, while there are also sales in the Rs 4-5 lakh bracket. We are eyeing selling around 2,000 cars a month by March 2024,” concludes an optimistic Aggarwal.
