Comments
Online used car platform Spinny said it will soon expand to four more cities including Mumbai, from six cities right now.
The company will invest from the existing funds that it had raised earlier this year. Spinny had raised fresh capital of ₹.315 crore from Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum Partnership in March. It had started-off with initial funding from Blume Ventures, Smile Ventures, Accel, SAIF Partners and Alteria Capital totalling close to ₹103 crore.
“We are currently operational in six cities including Delhi-NCR (Delhi, Noida and Gurugram), Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune. We are aiming to start our business in four new cities very soon, leading with Mumbai followed by Ahemdabad, Chennai and Kolkata,” Niraj Singh – Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Spinny, told BusinessLine .
Festival demand
He said the company saw uptick in used car buyers during the pandemic and sold over 1,000 cars from last week of October to November 16, which was a 20 per cent increase in demand for cars compared to same period in 2019.
“With 80 per cent of our buyer base under the age of 35, we feel the cultural stigma around used cars, specially around festive season is also contributing to this growth. Coupled with offers on new cars, we did witness a negative impact this time of the year in 2019,” he said adding that Spinny reached the pre-Covid number in August itself and are now growing with 20 per cent every month.
The company witnessed an increase in demand for cars in the range of ₹3 lakh-5 lakh that contributes to about 50 per cent of the overall demand. Key customer preferences include compact sedans, entry-level and premium hatchbacks including Grand i10, Elite i20, Swift, Honda Amaze and Renualt Kwid, Singh said.
Roadblocks
The used car market size in India is currently around $27 billion and the market size is over 4.2 million units, which is nearly 1.2 times that of new cars sold in fiscal year at 33,77,436 units. There is a major deterrent in the form of the unorganised nature of the market operations.
While according to the study, the market is set to grow to up to 7.2 million units by 2022, there is a major challenge that needs to be addressed – maintaining trust and transparency with customers, he added.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.