Gaadi.com was launched today by PKBS, an consumer internet company that also owns SecondShaadi.com – Gaadi.com hopes to create a one stop place for all your car buying needs – from researching which car to buy by comparing various cars on price, technical specifications, etc to helping you contact dealers closest to you, to applying for financing or insurance on your car, it lets you do everything in one place. It also has a recommend a car feature, in which the system recommends a car to you based on a short list of questions. You can also check how much your car is worth today – particularly useful if you are looking to sell or buy a used car.
“Gaadi.com pays strong emphasis on user generated content”, says CEO Vivek Pahwa. “To become a comprehensive research platform for users to help decide which the right car is for them, you have to bring in the community aspect – You need to know what others who own the car think about it – you want to get recommendations from the community before purchasing a vehicle. The whole car purchase exercise is a long and a well thought out one – we want everyone considering a new or used car purchase to visit our site and read about the cars available in the market.”
Currently there are a few auto portals in India, but they are at very nascent stages. Gaadi.com hopes to attract 30,000 unique visitors a day to its platform in a period of 3 months. “Once we get to a stage where we influence a significant number of users in their choice of a purchase, we can get can manufacturers to advertise with us. There are other revenue sources such as lead generation for finance & insurance and for lead generation to dealers“
Gaadi.com also offers tips and information on car financing and insurance. It lets a user apply for financing and insurance in a few clicks. Users can also ask the closest dealers to get in touch with them with a price quote on the car they are interested in purchasing. It also has a feature called My Gaadi – this lets users maintain their current cars online, the system sending them regular alerts on servicing, oil changes etc.
Gaadi.com will start a used car exchange platform in the coming months. This will let users buy and sell used cars online or offline, by reaching out to the biggest community of people searching for cars in India. “This is the real value of the internet, it can bring more people together on a common platform across the country than a specific classifieds vertical such as a regional newspaper or a magazine.”
The site’s tagline is - Think Cars. Think Gaadi. PKBS, which also owns SecondShaadi.com is internally funded and has not raised any external funding so far.
For more information go to http://www.gaadi.com/
