AutoIndia April 17, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Automobiles , add a commentAutoIndia is a online marketplace for Indian automobiles. They started back in late 2005 and are headquartered in Trivandrum, Kerala. The site seems to be professionally designed, with some (minor) flaws, but well thought out in terms of scope. There is everything that an buyer/seller may need: forum, news, classifieds, reviews, advice, quotes, directory, etc. I tinkered around to get a sense of the content and couldn’t make up my mind. On one hand, I was able to locate 8 BMW’s for sale in Delhi (with pictures!), but couldn’t get a list of Bajaj dealers in Delhi. Maybe they are still ramping up after 1.5 years of existence.
Some notes for functionality though- It’d be a great idea to put a comma after digits to help figure out difference between thousands, lakhs and crores. Seriously, I was squinting at the screen to figure out how many damn zeros were there for a 1994 BMW318Ci. That may be the reason why more than one car seemed to be priced wrong… there was a 2004 X5 with a asking price of Rs.14,000.00 (14 thousand- Heck, I’ll take two)!! I’m sure the poor seller meant to write Rs.14,000,00 (14 Lakh) but got confused. I don’t blame him/her, this is just poor site design
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Their tagline left me scratching my head: “Indian Dream Drive”. Makes no sense to me, but maybe it’s a south-India thing to throw in catchy words irrespective of overall meaning. I was also amused by the ownership section of their ‘About Us’ page- It simply says “Strategic joint-venture 100% owned and funded by NRI’s”. Nice.. that really narrows it down for us.
BharathAutomobiles January 15, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Automobiles , add a commentAllright, here is the second startup site from AmTek Systems Inc. BharathAutomobiles is an auto portal for consumers in India to buy/sell second hand cars, motor cycles, scooters… even trucks and buses (!).
First, the positive review:
- It has a clean design.
- Posting ads is offered free to consumers. Good move.
- It claims to have some intelligent features: private messaging, online help, buyer/seller feedback and auto email notifications.
- Content was surprisingly rich - when I checked it out, they had over 8000 listings (incuding ‘wanted’ ads). Most listings were from south India, although you could see a delhi/pune here and there.
Now the negative:
- The site is neat, but I liked BharathRentals look-and-feel better. No big issue though.
- Business Model: They currently offer an ebay-ish premium listing, which is how I think they expect to make money. My issue is that I doubt it’ll be enough to sustain them in the long run. For a high-cost transaction business like automobiles, it makes more sense to get a cut of the final deal price. Maybe they dismissed that model because of the expected friction from the traditional auto buy/sell workflow in India (everyone will make underhand moves to take Bharathautomobiles out of the financial deal, once it’s finalized).
- There are no images in most of the ads. Another clue to the lazy way traditonal market works in India.
Overall, I think these guys are attempting to enter a complex market burdened with rigid traditional workflow and high-risk, high-cost transactions. But I’m in awe of thier attempt - it’s heartening to know that there are people who would push India to the digitized business model. Keep it up guys.
Footnotes:
- I wrote about AmTek’s other ventures: BharatRentals here and BrahminsMatrimony here.
- What’s up with the “bharath” spelling? That tells me that the founders are probably from southern India. Guys, it’ll be prudent to buy the ‘bharat..’ versions of domain names, and point them to the main site. Some of us north Indians dont spell names the way you do
Indimoto January 6, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Automobiles , add a commentIndiMoto is a professional looking website about auto (cars, bikes) classifieds and carpools. It has been live since April 2006.
Their claim-to-fame (and what I really like) is the carpool section. I think there is a big need to be filled in coordinating Indians for carpooling. There were 500+ items in the carpool section when I checked, and that is a modest amount of people interacting with the site, increasing it’s utility.
Another worthwhile section is their blog, which is a easy to read and maybe people trying to keep up with Auto industry news would like frequenting it (it’s relatively new though- the archives go back to late 2006 only). The rest of site is nothing unique- it’s a craigslist type model for autos. I am still puzzled as to how IndiMoto plans to make money.. there are no advertisers on their yet.
Maybe that is where the bottleneck lies for Indian web startups currently. They can setup the infrastructure and get the eyeballs to the site, but the traditional Indian marketing money is still far away from being invested in online ads. How long can they hold their breath for monetizing their page views?