Automobile services have become one of the hottest sectors for startups
With India all set to become one of the top five automobile markets by 2020, automobile services have transformed into one of the hottest sectors for startups in the country this year.
Increasing Trend of Mobile apps
In Hyderabad as well, this trend is northward bound. In the recent times, an increase in apps assisting people with roadside emergency, doorstep pick-up and delivery services, insurance renewals and spare part supply for various cars and bikes have flooded the virtual space. And this has made Automobile services a top trend in the market.
At the national level, India currently possesses 157 startups offering such ‘at the click of the button services’. This number was limited to only 53 until 2014.
In the cities, the majority share of customers for these startups, say entrepreneurs working in the automobile sector, come from the Hi-Tech City area.
While it is the increasing population of various time-pressed professionals that drove a few startups to set up base in ‘hi-tech city’- Hyderabad, for others, this decision was made after surveying the extent of ‘Smartphone penetration’ in the region.
Read Here : Maruti Suzuki’s target price rises; earnings upgrade
According to the Owners of these apps
“We used statistics of both Google and Facebook’s to survey the market in Hyderabad before launching our app and found out that the smartphone penetration was highest in the tech- freak Cyberabad region of Hyderabad.
This could primarily be due to a large number of tech-savvy IT professionals in this area. There are also a huge number of private vehicles in this area in comparison to the rest of the city,” said Prudhvi Krishna of Pick My Gaadi, a mobile-based app that offers pick-up and delivery of vehicles, road-side assistance and insurance renewals.
Mycarport, an all new startup which has developed an app to give its users a complete and regular ‘health report’ of their cars as well conducted a market research survey before they launched operations in various areas of Hyderabad, one of them being the city’s growing IT hub.
“About more than 60% of car owners in the Cyberabad region do not take their cars to the workshop regularly for maintenance. They tend to visit the service stations only when the car develops a few issues. Also, close to, around 70% of the cars in Hyderabad are around three years old, which also means that they have, used up all their free servicing periods. This is when an affordable service scheme like ours comes into the picture,” said Yaswant Adiraju, co-founder of the four-member team of Mycarport.
From around nine automobile servicing startups in the city till 2014, the number has increased to 21 in 2016.It is such a remarkable growth in Automobile services.
