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Digitally Empowering Car Buyers | Anurag Jain @ GirnarSoft
148 Plays4 years ago
Ever thought of starting a venture from a tier 2 city? I’m sure the majority of you haven’t. It was the love for his family that brought our guest back to his hometown Jaipur and started a venture which is soon going to be a unicorn.
In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Anurag Jain, COO & Co-Founder, GirnarSoft, takes us through his amazing journey. He is an alumnus of IIT Delhi and has worked with eminent software companies both in the US and India, before starting his entrepreneurial journey.
Anurag reminisces about his early days and how a life-altering moment led him to quit his lucrative software job, come back to Jaipur and start a venture with a vision to establish in the consumer internet space. He started GirnarSoft in 2007 with his brother Amit as an IT outsourcing company.
After experimenting for a year or so, the duo visited an international AutoExpo which sparked the idea of an auto portal and CarDekho came into existence. Since then, CarDekho has expanded into the South-East Asian markets and is currently valued at around USD 800 million.
Tune in to this episode to listen to the fascinating story of how these strong-willed entrepreneurs from Jaipur succeeded in building a venture based on sheer hard work and determination.
What you must not miss!
- Fundraising journey.
- Acquisitions and subsequent global expansion.
- Significance of customer experience.
- Secrets of managing people.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:10
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay Hi, this is Saurabh and you are listening to the founder thesis podcast We meet some of the most celebrated sort of founders in the country and we want to learn how to build a unicorn
00:00:25
Speaker
Hi guys, this is Anurag. I am the co-founder of Grignard which you properly known as El Cardico.
00:00:34
Speaker
Can you build a unicorn from a small town like Jaipur? Don't think so. Well, we're pretty sure that after listening to this fascinating conversation between Akshay Dutt and Anurag Jain, the founder of Kiranar Soft, you will change your mind. Anurag and Amit Jain were diligent in chasing the small town dream. They graduated from IITs and worked in software companies in the US.
00:00:58
Speaker
But they also have the DNA of entrepreneurship in their blood, along with a deep love for their family which made them quit lucrative jobs and come back to Jaipur and earn there by doing business. They started a software services business and kept experimenting and pivoting to eventually form the Karthiko Group, which is on its way to becoming a unicorn that takes care of all things around car ownership. Here's Anurag talking about his early childhood years in Jaipur.
00:01:28
Speaker
So, you were born in Jaipur only? Tell me about your family. So, when I started to start Karithi, I started to find personal reasons. Both me and my brother were born in Jaipur. The story actually started in 1948 when my grandfather moved to Jaipur. At this point, my grandfather's father-in-law
00:01:53
Speaker
He was a doctor in those times. And in fact, he was one of the first few Indians who had done their medical degree from London. So 1930s, he was a renowned doctor in Jaipur. And he passed away suddenly. And only my grandmother and grandfather were married. My grandmother was the eldest child of that family.
00:02:24
Speaker
So my father-in-law left about 7-8 kids with my grandmother as the young eldest who was married. And my grandfather was also 7-8 brothers and sisters in Lucknow. So originally my family was in Lucknow. But in 1948, once my
00:02:44
Speaker
grandfather's father-in-law have passed away. Mother and mother, grandfather, parents, parents, and all of those things. There was like eight children with one on the way in the pregnancy stage of my age. But I have a troubling time. I'm sure I can imagine.
00:03:06
Speaker
Culturally, my grandfather's father said, I think it's the call of the art. So he's my grandfather to Jaipur. He joined the Rajasthan administrative services, and he retired as an additional secretary later on. And the point I was trying to make here was the family values and empathy for each other for doing things for the family was very high. My father was an officer in Azerbaijan, again, like a typical middle class government service family.
00:03:35
Speaker
Father actually, in his 40s, when he was 41, he sent over to the Mandel Commission or 1990. He was claiming the commission was here.
Family Influence and Return to India
00:03:52
Speaker
So he got transferred to Srinagar when he was in Lisbon. And we didn't want to send him to Srinagar because of obvious reasons there. So he took a sabbatical at that point of time.
00:04:03
Speaker
and he learnt some bit of jewellery trade with them.
00:04:12
Speaker
And Jaipur is very vibrant. He learned a bit. And he thought I could do it. And then as luck would have it, he took a VRS post-20 service and then started a small-time boutique jewelry trading business where he would go from India and then he would go to US and select there. In fact, I remember we were in school.
00:04:40
Speaker
But when we grew up and went to IIT and started doing our jobs, I asked Dad, what was the motivation of leaving a job at 41 and adding a business which you did not know and you invested all your savings in that?
00:04:55
Speaker
So he did reasonably well for a one-man army kind of a show, not a great failed business, but for where he was and where he kind of finished very happy. So dad responded when I was 40, I realized that
00:05:12
Speaker
I did not want my kids to kind of go through the same struggle of finding a job. Obviously dad did not know what he would end up becoming. So I should probably try to do something which gives my kids a platform to kind of build upon. You were two brothers, how many siblings were you? Two, we are only two brothers.
00:05:40
Speaker
Both of us made to IIT Delhi and obviously when you graduate from a premium college, you have better opportunities, better packets, better quality of life and what not. So we did not join his business. So he was doing his business alone with one of the nephews, one of the worst kids. And so another man, I did not ask you to join me. You can continue to do what you want. That kind of a sentiment he carried.
00:06:09
Speaker
Both of you went into the software field.
00:06:20
Speaker
So, both of us went into the software field. In fact, a couple of parallel stories, because the same family took us apart. We went to the same school, then we went to the same college. Then we both worked for US-based companies. In fact, Texas-based companies, he was working for a company called Trilogy. I was working for a Dallas-based company called I2.
00:06:42
Speaker
Well, in the US, you were like in India. We were in the US,
Founding Grinar Soft
00:06:46
Speaker
but both of us came back to Bangalore to work from the Bangalore office to companies. So, Jaipur came back from IIT Delhi and then US and then Bangalore. So, you know, did it.
00:06:58
Speaker
Did it change your perspective on Jaipur and, you know, like... Hugely, hugely. Jaipur was not that high. A lot of the exposure and how to deal with things, learning skills. Jaipur, we were like protecting the family environment. So the street smartness, that was more when we went to the college.
00:07:27
Speaker
Both of us were not like geeky, nerdy kind of students. So you were not naturally gifted in the same way. So hard work and determination basically got us where we were in terms of getting selected into IIT.
00:07:45
Speaker
Although family members are more hardworking, I am more gifted. So there's a trade-off between us, but multiplication is kind of the same way. I do lesser hard work, but I get a better result. And he has to work a lot more there to get the same result. That was a real understanding of the perceptions people had built about us. In fact, we were born on the same date two years apart. That's an interesting anecdote.
00:08:15
Speaker
I don't know how to say that. So we used to say that dad is mad at us. Anyway, so the original question is about family values. When we were in Bangalore, Us time paid for 2005. My dad unfortunately got diagnosed with cancer. So both of us basically then tried whatever we could to say, met all the doctors. I took him to MIT Stone in US, could experimental drug try.
00:08:46
Speaker
So doctors gave him four months, but we could extend his life to about 15-16 months. So 2006, he passed away. And that's when we decided that we have grandparents. Two choices that we had. We were living in Bangalore. Amit was married at that point of time. I was single. And the choice was that either we ask our grandparents because dad was the only male child. And then obviously, you need to take care of the family from that perspective.
00:09:16
Speaker
So we had a grandparent's school with mother. We decided ultimately because of the whole lineage thing about being there for the family that it will be unfair for us to kind of
00:09:35
Speaker
asked our grandparents at such an old age to come to Bangalore and settle with us. Because we had a victory and then asked them to plant it elsewhere and then expect them to live there. So we thought, we already have a double children's family. So, we thought, we are going to do this, we are going to do this. That was a sentiment by which we came to Jaipur. Both of you quit together only? Yeah. So, both of us quit. But my dad was ill too.
00:10:03
Speaker
Obviously, when he was in the jewelry trading business, there is a credit cycle. When you sell, you don't get paid immediately. So there is a cycle of about five to six months when you get paid. So he was also worried that what will happen because of the terminal in LSE ads. So I had taken a break from the job and went with him to meet all his customers to make sure that we tell them that there is somebody who is going to be there. So we could introduce him later.
00:10:31
Speaker
to take care of all the financials and what not.
00:10:34
Speaker
So I went with him. I met all his customers. I went to US to New York and LA, wherever his business was. So I went with him, did a round, met everybody, understood from him. So he made a detailed note on an Excel key. He made a very elaborate kind of things. In fact,
00:11:02
Speaker
He also kind of told me how he sells, how he interacts. So I could basically do him doing all the hard work and grant work on the field because we used to operate very differently. We always got a red carpet.
Cardeco's Journey and Challenges
00:11:19
Speaker
But in MSME, you have to kind of lead a very different life. So the ground work reality
00:11:26
Speaker
You know, I must say that your father is like amazingly, like from being an RBI officer, he learned how to sell. And not only did he learn how to sell, but he sold in the US. I'm sure he would have never
00:11:48
Speaker
gone to the U.S. before this. Yeah, yeah, it was first time in England. I'm amazed that there's a lot of customers in the U.S. who are interested in this. Yeah, it's called Book of Yellow. It is a call of people from there. You buy a kind of built-in network from the ground.
00:12:03
Speaker
That's right. And he was selling to retailers like jewelry retailers. He was selling to wholesalers and wholesalers would basically sell it to retailers. That's how the market operates there. He landed in the US with samples and a yellow pages book and then he just like hustled and amazing. Okay.
00:12:32
Speaker
So, so then like once he like did a handover and you know kind of taught you. He did a handover and dad came and passed away. Obviously, we had to go and tell the customers that this is what it is. So, after his death and we basically tried to
00:12:56
Speaker
collect money and also sell some of these good sets. So if you have to sell for 100 rupees, you need to have an inventory of at least 1000 rupees. That kind of a ratio is there. So inventory is that over the years built. But we went with his goods and basically we sold as well as collected money from the market. And then we realized
00:13:22
Speaker
we might as well try something in our field or line. And at that point of time, both of us reached out. I reached out to my employers and Amit, he's our team's employer. And that's how Grinnard software was born, actually. Our ex-bosses gave us, so my ex-boss manager, if I do, gave me my first piece of work in the company.
00:13:46
Speaker
We were in L.A. that time. We had sent fillers because we realized that this is not something that we could do long term. But this is not something that we would end up doing all the time. So we had sent out fillers to our network. For software projects? Yeah, for projects to outsource software projects clinically, basically.
00:14:16
Speaker
one of my managers at I2 was a director there. He had quit I2 and he had done a startup in healthcare in Amsterdam and he was a partner there. So he basically told me that he has an opportunity but he can be an influencer but not a decision maker because he's one of the four partners. So I go there make a pitch and basically get the product but he would give me a platform to kind of
00:14:53
Speaker
It was like he gave me a choice but I did a job in my operation research and software development. So I took an optimisation which is like co-op and the project was in the same space.
00:15:16
Speaker
What is your typical software development side of my exposure? Product management. Ryan was the guy who was my manager at I2. So he told me that it is better that if you come because you need a job, you need an OR or an intersection payer. So a lot of overall knowledge will be beneficial in impressing people. And I know you can.
00:15:37
Speaker
So I figured it out. So me and Amit decided and we basically then went to figuring out how we reached there because he told me it's a short timeline, you have to be there in about a week. And it is not something, so I was in US, I did not have a change in user, that was the issue. So up to India, I'll apply Karo and getting the
00:16:06
Speaker
people were done and then that was kind of the timeline was getting. So although I have an Indian passport, let's figure it out. Let's give it a short kick. So I went to the embassy directly, just walked in and the conflict officer there explained my situation that I need to
00:16:32
Speaker
Go to Holland for a emergency meeting. I am in US I don't have the time to go back to India And is there a way that I can get a change in visa sitting in LA? from your embassy
00:16:44
Speaker
So he basically said it is possible, there is a way. You need to have a letter of invite from the company, you need to have this, you need to have that. If you can arrange all this paperwork, then you can look at issuing a visa from here. We'll do a background verification in checks and then it is possible.
00:17:09
Speaker
Worked with Amit to come collect all the paperwork. And in three days I was at Embassy. And fourth day I had the visa in my hand and fifth day I cried out. So probably what learning, I mean, if I look back at the situation, I could have
00:17:36
Speaker
Maybe the idea was that attitude was always that we will work it out. We will find the best way to work it out.
00:17:51
Speaker
And they were impressed by what we had to say. So they gave us a task. We went onward like that. There is no company at the path. There is nothing the first time over here. So we are risking all development with you. So we'll give you a pilot project. And you work on this pilot project and deliver to us in a month. If you're able to do it, the project is yours.
00:18:15
Speaker
It was in legacy, VB language and what not, but being programmers, language is important because you are a developer at heart, not married to any particular language. So both we were kind of coordinated amongst each other and delivered the product in two weeks. So both weeks, we were able to finish and deliver and we got the first project.
00:18:36
Speaker
and that's how actually the Guinard software's first client got onboarded, which was my ex-cause. The second product came from Amit's CEO, Trilajee. So the product he used to manage at Trilajee. What is that company? I've not heard of Trilajee. Trilajee is a company, an Austin based company and I too was the company that I used to work for.
00:19:02
Speaker
Those were companies in different software spaces in US, based out of US. Like SaaS companies or something, like Trilogy? SaaS, they were used to basically do software development services and concentrated for insurance companies and auto companies.
Growth and Venture Capital
00:19:17
Speaker
Okay, okay. And I2 was into supply chain management. Yeah, I2 I've heard of, yes, okay.
00:19:23
Speaker
This was in early 2007 that you got these two deals. Yeah, 2007, we got these two deals. I think one learning here was that if you build a good working relationship, if you have a good rapport, if you have a good impression about your skills and capabilities, then there are people always willing to help you in the network. So we did all our jobs with a high amount of integrity and contribution impact. So perspective, basically, the
00:19:53
Speaker
The relationships helped later when we were in need of getting our first opportunity in the market out there. Okay. So how much did you do as your revenue first year, Matlab 7-8-1? First year revenue was actually more than what we would have made in our salaries. It was a crore in that time. So Omari salaries, the combined around 50 lakh as per the partiality cost and we made about a crore in the first year.
00:20:21
Speaker
But you must have hired a team and all. So we hired about 20 people. And the first 20 people was the team. So we obviously did not hire from stellar colleges. So people basically, so there's talent outside of IITs and NITs.
00:20:49
Speaker
But generally, every company runs after a brand name because the probability of finding a good talent from a better college is higher. The probability of finding a better job from a premium college is higher. But there is talent outside of those qualities also. So we personally interviewed a lot of people and then we
00:21:17
Speaker
shortlisted a bunch of candidates from TL2 qualities, whom we felt are worth investing into. And that on the core of Grinar. So, okay, actually, initial Salvidongi was anywhere between 5,000 to 10,000 monthly of Usdamanikal. So, our payroll bill was not very high. We could sustain those payroll bills. Because everybody, we hired only freshers, no experienced people. Freshers were higher and they went on to become the core layer of Grinar.
00:21:44
Speaker
And at that point of time, for the first six, seven years, who said obviously team is much bigger, much larger now, but initial journey came there. Everybody played a pivotal role in getting to where we are.
00:21:58
Speaker
Two customers, what was the growth like? Two customers, basically, then we kind of opened up the overall ecosystem that we are building. So we did not actually grow that business a lot, frankly. In 2008, once we built some cash bench, the vision was always to do something in the consumer internet space.
00:22:17
Speaker
So, we started in 2008, January. But the consumer internet space is the early vision of the company. There are so many examples. Every other day, some companies are becoming a unicorn and people are inspired by D2C, SaaS, you know. But in 2008, there were examples. So, how did you decide if India made the consumer internet business?
00:22:45
Speaker
So, post time pay, if you realize that US Kendal e-commerce was already started to kind of play footprints in two people.
00:22:56
Speaker
It was a matter of internet penetration. So we realized that what has been happening in the developed countries, India is maybe just a decade behind. And once the problems of internet get solved, all these things will be digitalized. So that's what we, and coming from staying in US for some time, working with companies who are US based. So we realized that this is like an opportunity that India is kind of looking at.
00:23:24
Speaker
in that time frame. So basically we did not want to give services something because number of growth is a function of number of people. There is no IP. We wanted to build a company which has IP and then you can basically build a scalable product from a revenue standpoint which can basically sustain beyond the number of people that you hire.
00:23:49
Speaker
Basically, we started investing our profits that we were accruing into these consumer internet space businesses that we wanted to do.
00:24:01
Speaker
What were the experiments you did? We were a tech company at heart. So we were not like an auto background. So we started four portals at the same time. The four portals were inspired by different genres of life.
00:24:21
Speaker
We built an astrology horoscope because our grandfather was an astrologer. We kind of built a simulation of Vedic rules of astrology and kind of built an engine which would simulate a human brain on how to interpret the number three and give predictions. Okay. Well, I'll take an algorithm, Banadia, and you like set it up as a service. Do you have any date of birth? Do you have any date of birth? Do you have any date? Correct. Okay. And what date service do you have?
00:24:51
Speaker
You could get one free report and for other reports you need to pay. We built a portal in selling silver jewelry online and because again inspired by Dad's connection in the market, we had suppliers in Jaipur and the arbitrage of selling silver jewelry online in US was very high. So we started a portal called My Jewelry Deals.
00:25:16
Speaker
You were selling online jewelry by recruiting from local people and selling it in the US. My jewelry deals, you were handling logistics also? You were handling logistics also. We used to ship to the end customer, which is why this business did not work out because the logistics cost was not viable from a retailer standpoint.
Diversification and Market Leadership
00:25:39
Speaker
And the third portal we started was acadust.com, which was a virtual stock trading platform. So Stampede, how to make money for money and all those things basically were in the, we were learning and doing trading was my point with, so we created a good lot of that virtual trading platform.
00:25:55
Speaker
And the fourth one was Cardico, which basically got inspired from our visit to Autorexpo in 2008, January, where news had gone and we were kind of going stall by stall, collecting brochures, whatnot. So we felt that there has to be a better way to kind of look at all this data in one go. And so we basically filled our car with all the brochures, came back to Jaipur and deployed a team to kind of dedulize all the brochures and create that first research platform of Cardico.
00:26:22
Speaker
So in two months, in less than two months, the first version of Cardico was out. So were the other portals. So probably if I can look back and say that we were agile in identifying opportunities.
00:26:35
Speaker
But we were also agile in perspective of what is going, what is not going. We created a highly measurable system. We created milestones. So things that don't work had to be killed. Things that worked had to be further innovated. And things that partially worked had to be pivoted. So all those learnings, if I look back, in the long journey that we have had, there have been so many instances where we would basically decide, let's stop investing into this business. There is no point.
00:27:05
Speaker
We were very objective into taking decisions and investing into all those things. We were in the game for building a sustainable business. In fact, that's the whole DNA of the company. The company lasts longer than the promoters itself. So, sustainable business is obviously a profit.
00:27:35
Speaker
So, we were investing in a limited capacity. Whatever the properties were from the services business, we were reinvesting back into these kinds of businesses. Then you would basically taper down the investment in that business or even shut it down completely, as was the case for Ekadas in the duality portal that we eventually shut down.
00:28:02
Speaker
We realized that this is not the right space or where you could basically build a profitable business by investing very little amount. And you were also spending on marketing like Google ads and all that? Nothing, nothing. So what we basically I think if you realize the history of Karthikore till we raise money and we raise money very late in the cycle.
00:28:26
Speaker
We had zero marketing dollars spent. Zero. Literally zero. We even did not have a Google Ads account, to be honest. Till the point where it was the first funding money. So what we learned at Crag was, and Amit was very good at it, was SEO, which is search and optimization. So we were probably, if I may say, the best in the country to do SEO for our websites. And because of which, our customer acquisition cost was zero. And you invest into content and user experience, and traffic comes as a byproduct.
00:28:57
Speaker
The long term benefits of doing this are very high because the biggest cost for consumer internet companies and we have learned this during our working of the organization and looking at other companies that TAC is the biggest cost. If you can somehow reduce TAC, our key business is line of conduct.
00:29:17
Speaker
So in 2010, Cardeku was the biggest portal in terms of traffic in India. And we talked and suddenly people realised that Cardeku was the biggest portal in India. So when was this? Sorry, in 2010 you said? Within two years of launching. Within two years of launching we were country leaders in terms of traffic.
00:29:43
Speaker
Yeah, okay. Like traffic overall, for auto... Auto, obviously auto. And otherwise, generic news sites and those sites will have a bigger traffic, for sure. Auto sites sector, we had top com score. Typically, OEMs, who do digital advertising, but they would basically look at com score reports and then decide on who to give their media inventory to.
00:30:11
Speaker
The revenue was like advertising, basically. The initial revenue was advertising and the adsense optimized initially. We did not use to sell media. We did not know how to sell media entry to these OEMs. So, we had integrated Google adsense. So, let's say revenue and the total revenue
00:30:36
Speaker
So we used to balance the spends on the portal and the revenue it was making in a way that in fact, in 2010, Cardico itself, I'll forget the services business, which was funding it initially. Within two years, Cardico itself was also profitable. Our engineering cost was also not very high and there was no marketing expense. So from that perspective, we,
00:31:05
Speaker
were able to build, make Cardeco profitable within two years of launching. So Cardeco was essentially for new car buyers who want to research. That was the first version of the website, but later on we added a lot more features around other features as well. So for the initial version you write that it was primarily focused around new cars and research around new cars.
00:31:30
Speaker
Okay, okay. So 10 may then, once it became profitable, did you continue B2B services also? Yeah, you like, you know, we actually learned all those things, just as a company can use for the game. I remember, I remember, they were working for OEM and they said they want to buy some inventory. And we
00:31:58
Speaker
At that point of time, we didn't see an operator operating at that point of time. So we figured that there was a CPM proposal in the deck.
00:32:07
Speaker
Just for our listeners, if we can just define these terms, OEM, CPM.
00:32:42
Speaker
You decide when we will give you the budget.
00:32:48
Speaker
And then the agency decides that there is only one player who decides to go to Google, Facebook, Facebook etc. One of the agencies reached out to us and said that we had a lot of inventory here. Because we had .com scores. And we did not know even what CPM to do. Because we had no Google access. It's nothing in your hands. The October 6th script was there. And then basically at the end of the month you get a check.
00:33:15
Speaker
So, but then we talked to people in the industry. We basically gave them a proposal. And we also then did take effort to make slots on the website to enter to these advertising slots. And then, so, we started a business in the beginning. We started a lead selling company. We started with dealers and OEMs want leads.
00:33:43
Speaker
So, lead-based business is a big part of pricing. So, we learned everything. Woke-up software like lead selling? 2011, man. So, it was not very far apart from when we started media. Because the media companies have a lot of leads. So, marketing divisions of auto manufacturers, they also buy leads through these channels. So, again, they only reached out to you. How many qualified leads? Yes, very few. Very few.
00:34:12
Speaker
So then you started asking people to enter their name and phone number as a way to? Yes. You start collecting leads and details of people. And with their consent, we would basically sell the leads to the manufacturers. But in 2010, we were able to get funding from the company. We wanted to evaluate you. We wanted to look at the company.
00:34:38
Speaker
What kind of investors, like global VCs or what? Global VCs. People who were starting to become active in India that kind of time. So in the auto sector, they were like 2-3 companies to look at only in the auto sector. Who were the others at that time? Karwale was there. Which I don't think is there today, no? Karwale got acquired by car trade. So it's still countries, but it is less than half our size now. It used to be formidable.
00:35:08
Speaker
competitor, but after its acquisition, we kind of accelerated more and I think we have a larger pie of market now. Okay, and who else? Mainly, the small little portals in that time frame. So, in fact, Carvale do Portalta, they got investment by Access Finger in 2010 time frame.
00:35:35
Speaker
And they basically started to do heavy marketing on stuff. We were also getting term sheets, but we did not accept any of the term sheets. We had accumulated a profit in our banks because of the services business that was running. And we felt that if we can spend all the money that we have spent from the services business.
00:36:06
Speaker
So we did not take money for a good three years. And 2013 came there, then things were starting to heat up. And we did not want to use on the bad. Amara Sarath to focus our traffic and media and lead this cupid. And we had a realization that to build a sustainable business, you need to have a long-term strategy.
00:36:35
Speaker
and a long-term brand. You can't be relying on, let's say tomorrow Google changes the algorithm, you get screwed in terms of you get started in no traffic and then what do you do? Because you are a brand. So he felt that Encarnica was profitable by then in a big way.
00:36:53
Speaker
We should raise money and start to build into various different kinds of revenue models and also strengthen the team because this opportunity is very becoming if people are trying to start valuing us at this number
00:37:11
Speaker
So there must be a big business that can be built out of this.
Cultural and Organizational Changes
00:37:15
Speaker
So let's not try to be a company which is frugal in terms of its cash reserves and is not able to scale because of the capital gain. So we thought that let's raise money.
00:37:41
Speaker
So Ek offered Tamaripas and Sikua came in and kind of sweetened the deal a bit and offered a term feud. So we directly did a series A. That was in the second half of 2013. So we first partnered with the company and directly did a series A and the perception of company changed a lot post that and
00:38:09
Speaker
Although we were the same people in the same company, maybe well, but I think all these milestones also give you some kind of a spot where people knew differently. Like at this stage, like who else was there in the market? Same competitors? Yeah. Were there more people? And we used to be neck to neck with them in terms of
00:38:38
Speaker
what we were doing and what they were doing. And what valuation did you get like if you are at liberty to share? So, it was a reasonable valuation in terms of numbers were revealing or not, but it will give the decision otherwise, but it was a reasonable valuation. I mean it was bigger than any of the opposite we have had before. Close to 100 up as a one.
00:39:05
Speaker
Okay, got it. Cheek. Overnight, you became almost like probably amongst the wealthiest people in Jaipur. How did that change you? We were the same people and even today we are the same people. It doesn't change you as a person or the company. But it changes people's perception of you.
00:39:33
Speaker
So that definitely changed because all the newspaper coverage and whatnot, then you start to being treated differently at times. Yeah, but did you enjoy that? Like, you know, the going into a different kind of enjoyment is not the right expression to define it.
00:39:52
Speaker
I think math and coffee were different in terms of we keep generally company man promoters, we keep a low profile. We are not that aggressive out in the market. We are doing marketing of our own profile, but not work for the company. So we focus on working for the company more. So limelight Kendra is not something that we both crave for too much faculty.
00:40:19
Speaker
So groundedness team basically, if I may put it in that words. Okay. So how did the company change after the funding? Well, you know, once an investor comes in, then there is a different type of approach because then the investor expects you to spend that money and show much faster growth than what you have shown in the past. And so the approach must have changed then.
00:40:43
Speaker
Right, so we changed gears. The company was basically funding this plan. The gears got changed a lot in terms of what we had been doing, the way we had been doing. So we expanded the team. We opened up first Google AdWords account, tried to capture on traffic where we were not getting enough leads or models.
00:41:07
Speaker
We also acquired companies which were similar to our business. That's a like. We also acquired Guardi.com. Guardi was also one of the competitors. It was almost half to our size in traffic. Guardi was almost equivalent. Guardi and us and Carvalle both basically all of the companies were
00:41:35
Speaker
in both new and used, but we were heavy on new and they were heavy on used. So, seconds left-right to donate it, but Guardi, Kado, Uskar, Kado, offerings team, they were better, and Avari, Niko, offerings were better. So, you kind of bought Guardi from Nashville and along with the acquisition among the company as a leadership in a leadership role.
00:42:00
Speaker
And along with the Guardi we also acquired Zigwheels from Time's Internet Group. Which is like a media property? So Zigwheels was also auto property but from a media house. It was like focused on transactions and like or was it? Again, again research on it was more like an editorial focus kind of a portrait. In a way it was a new car focused on media property.
00:42:28
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Okay. So, and did that work out? Well, like zig wheels and Guardian acquisitions, like, you know, how would you rate them?
00:42:36
Speaker
amazingly well. Both the acquisitions work really well. But having said that, I mean, we did about 14-15 acquisitions of smaller enterprise firms, which were basically helped in building back ends. Some of the acquisitions also did not work. So it's not that all things that we did work like a charm. So they were also, what you see is, so we would have planted a lot of seeds.
00:43:00
Speaker
and the world sees the shoots that they have grown out of the seeds at work, but there have been a lot of seeds which also did not work. Same thing which you did in 2008-09, the same approach you took basically.
00:43:15
Speaker
So that approach we actually take every year if you think of it. We do some bit of innovation which we feel can be a growth river in five years from now. So as a company, you have to think a decade ahead, right? I mean, our job career, you will not be doing the same thing in 10 years from now. That is guaranteed in the current environment.
00:43:46
Speaker
In that sense, we still are a company which feels that we have an incubation leadership team in the current size that we operate today. But that incubation leadership team is not a bit of management.
International Expansion and Ecosystem Approach
00:44:02
Speaker
It is more about planting some seed which can become a growth leader at a later stage.
00:44:07
Speaker
So for example, our financial services business, our insurance business, those are the seeds that were planted in 2015-16 time frame and are doing very well now. Tell me about them. So insurance is, we have a quote to call insurance deco where we are selling online policies for auto insurance and now we have diversified into health and terminal both.
00:44:35
Speaker
Okay, like you're a competitor to policy bazaar in that business. In a way, yes. So we started with auto as a background because that was our, let's say, sweet spot of the relationship that we had. In a way, now we are competing with policy bazaar there. We're in fact doing almost a lakh policies a month in that business now.
00:44:56
Speaker
Okay, amazing. Okay. And you said financial services also you, you planted the seed in 15. What was that? And the services is more about creating a banking platform where you aggregate all the banks on one side. And on the other side, you have dealers who can basically punch in their loan files for use cards. So new card method, loan penetration is very high, almost 75% loan penetration, but use cards may 15% cash per day, loan penetration.
00:45:25
Speaker
And still the industry is not connected. So there's a huge opportunity there. And we basically built a platform where we would basically would match dealers to. And what is that called?
00:45:49
Speaker
It's branded as currency services. It does not have a retail view. But eventually we'll also convert this into some opportunity which we feel at the right time pivoting into the retail space.
00:46:17
Speaker
So we did road trade assistance where we had acquired a startup which we felt that in the car ownership space that might do well.
00:46:30
Speaker
because of the base that we had on customers, but that did not fly very well. We had to shut down that initiative. I think it's more about management bandwidth. All businesses are good, but you need to have the right management bandwidth and
00:46:56
Speaker
So after funding we spread ourselves so thin that we were not able to focus on
00:47:03
Speaker
all the opportunities that you wanted to chase. So you can't chase all the opportunities at the same time. And that's the learning that we have carried now, even today. Focus on two or three things. Don't try to divide your attention too much. Because if the management is not there, you can't get that alignment with people. So he was not able to scale the business. And we were not in a position to help him too much.
00:47:30
Speaker
because of the other spreading of opportunity. But we were not going to do it. So I will not blame the sector. I will blame that we did not have the right bandwidth and magnitude to look at it.
00:47:48
Speaker
Okay. What were some other experiments that... We also failed. We felt that people want warranty on use first. So as a product offering dealership, which also did not work well at that point of time, dealerships did not sell it as much, which they could. And then we kind of
00:48:16
Speaker
rolled back the warranty program a bit. But the financial services started to get traction and we basically then started to double down on those opportunities at that point of time, which is given dividends now. And your services business is still going on or have you shut that down?
00:48:39
Speaker
So we can shut it down. It is a non-core business. So we call it non-auto solutions now. It's healthy a bit for us, but we did not shut it down because of the relationships. And then there's a viewer taking care of that business in a smaller space, but we are not bullish and aggressive in terms of growing that business to a large scale. Okay. And so is businesses still like working with foreign companies for their software? Mostly around that, your opinions.
00:49:07
Speaker
Some bit of domestic as well. We are trying to pivot that business into building enterprise SaaS products for the market now. Like what? Like what do you mean by like HR and finance? We have a chatbot platform. We have a LMS platform which a lot of OEMs have adopted to now. So enterprise SaaS solutions, products members, customer initiative basically, create a suite of products which basically enterprises can use.
00:49:36
Speaker
Okay. Got it. Okay. Okay. And how did the core Cardekho platform evolve from 15 to now? So Cardekho, what is your journey? Are you focused? In Uskar, we started to do classifieds and built a partner solutions team, which could basically go and interact with all these Uskar dealers and try to sell them tax for classifieds. Then insurance leads or financial services.
00:50:05
Speaker
And then later on, consumer auction businesses came. So we had like a bank auction business, which we did with insurance companies and banks of their repossessed vehicles and salvage vehicles who sell in two dealers. So we did a B2B auction business first, and that is a profitable business for us to take.
00:50:28
Speaker
and then later on that business got expanded into a consumer auction business where we basically opened stores and we are buying from customers their cars and electric dealers that was the natural extension of the B2B auction business it is where Cars24 is a competitor now and we also did the international expansion so we opened
00:50:58
Speaker
research portals in emerging markets and out of which we are heavily focusing on Southeast Asia as a region. As we speak today we are the biggest research portal in new cars in Indonesia in the brand name oath.com and we also have a portal in Philippines which we acquired and then merged with our offering.
00:51:18
Speaker
And we are looking at Malaysia and other geographies there now. So this basically relates into the theme that I kind of said earlier about investing into
Innovation and Future Strategies
00:51:29
Speaker
some seeds today, which basically become a growth reward in five years from now.
00:51:34
Speaker
So we are an international company, so to speak today, as we can today. And we are a conglomerate structure in India, where we are chasing multiple opportunities, like insurance, consumer auctions. And now we are also kind of looking to open used car showrooms. And the experiments have been really, really successful in the brand name Trustmark, where we'll be selling used cars to consumers and eliminate their worries about owning a used car. OK.
00:51:59
Speaker
So aren't these like very asset-heavy place like buying used cars from customers? Isn't that very asset-heavy? Yeah, even opening a showroom. So you're right. These are asset-heavy businesses. And initially we were asset-like where we were doing major businesses. But we realized over the years that to own the market, you need to deliver a great consumer experience. So customer experience is delivered in Nahinkia.
00:52:29
Speaker
So, you have to have a lot of connectivity because you have to have a lot of follow-up experience. You have to have a lot of buying experience. A lot of challenges are there if you want to build a long-term value for the customer. And to own the full customer experience, you need to have your skin in the game also, which is where the asset heaviness comes from.
00:52:57
Speaker
And let's say that the customer has to go to the inventory of the dealer. You have to go to the bank after the reverse auction. At the end of the auction, there is a dealer. And he has not bid for your car. Then you will not be able to offer a price to your consumer at that immediate instant. You might be able to offer him a price later. But immediately, you will be able to offer him a price later.
00:53:25
Speaker
All those customer experiences with the improvements, India is in a sector like cars. India is an O2O market. It's not like a pure online market. What do you mean O2O? Online to online. Online discovery O2O but transaction offline. Yes, online to offline. So India is very O2O in a lot of sectors and cars is one of them.
00:53:52
Speaker
Eventually, 10 years, 15 years from now, I can envision people even buying a car online frankly, and especially the advent of EV vehicles, where opening up of dealerships and service centers is not that critical for that car. This might be a reality.
00:54:12
Speaker
Even in new car businesses, we have moved into a transaction space where we are assisting people. People still buy from dealers, but we are going into the transaction piece where we can help them transact on the platform itself for buying the car. But if you have like a payment option, like someone is paying itself. Yes. So some experiments were not there in that sector where we, instead of supplying the lead and forgetting about it, you get involved in the transaction itself so that you can deliver the experience.
00:54:42
Speaker
Okay. Okay. And like, are people paying? We are not the major bets we are doing right now. We have opened in two cities and the results have been good.
00:55:10
Speaker
Those, we have 50 plus towards MRA and those are also end up like one and a half year old experiments which are doing well now.
00:55:18
Speaker
Okay. So, you know, Indian consumers are compared to the West, you know, Indian consumers are not the most ethical. But look, there is such a high risk. Is that a problem? Or is it just something which I think is a problem? So we have a very exhaustive inspection process.
00:55:46
Speaker
which we are able to ascertain the vehicle's, we have 100 plus checkpoints, and we have a fact which basically looks at the engine suspension, everything, paint, gauge. So equipment is the money inspectors inspect the vehicle. And based on that condition, we basically ascertain what the value should be. So all that data is fed in and then your algorithm throws up a price? Yes, yes. Okay.
00:56:15
Speaker
These are AI, ML engine, which of this report gives out a price along with the other macro variables, which is the basic ones, mileage and year of manufacturer and whatnot. And then you stock these cars in your showrooms like once you buy them. So if you think in the play that we are doing, what are we doing exactly? I am looking at the play. I am looking at the play.
00:56:44
Speaker
we have a circle of services which a new car buyer or a used car buyer will basically, eventually end up taking in his experiences with Auto as a sector.
00:57:12
Speaker
So we are the only pair which is doing a full stack ecosystem play across all these services. What about servicing, like, you know, the mechanical maintenance? As of now, we are not chasing that opportunity like the learning that I said about where you don't want to do too many things at the same time and not do good at a few of them. It's a great opportunity, I think, but we probably focus it on a time where we have built enough traction into these businesses and then we look at this.
00:57:41
Speaker
But you could look at an acquisition in that space. If there are companies like go mechanic, there might be others also. At the right time, I think those things can be thought of as well. So, car ownership space, what are the ways to enter, what are the services you would want to offer? You need to think about those things rather than just service. Okay, got it. Car buying space and car owning space.
00:58:06
Speaker
Okay, okay. So today, who are your competitors? I mean, I know one is, of course, Dhruv is like a recent entrant. And you know, how do you see Dhruv as a competitor? And who else are there? Like I said, we are doing multiple businesses in the various degrees of maturity. We had Carvalet,
00:58:36
Speaker
There are a number of options. There are cars 24. Classified, there is OLX. Insurance, there is a policy bazaar. Financial services, there is a bank bazaar. Then there is, on the other used car classified side, Doom and all the other smaller players are there. Cartered is there in the other options space, could be to be options space. There are different competitors.
00:59:05
Speaker
And because of the ecosystem play that we are doing, we are able to, in spite of raising, let's say 20-30% of capital that other people would have raised, we are able to do a better job at the thing because of the ecosystem's energy. What I mean by that is that, let's say my instruction is in the vehicle. So, what is the cost?
00:59:27
Speaker
That gets divided into my insurance business. My banking is a financial services business because bank value under it can be reported. My card auction business where I have to report a report from the bank, I have to cross the business. If you imagine other players doing the same thing, you have to open a sector with cost of 20% in the contribution margin.
00:59:52
Speaker
Because of equal supply, I am able to kind of have a much better unit economist across the businesses. We are dealing with the Salesforce team and partner solutions. The team is supposed to sell insurance as a product on the counter or let's say, loan as a account product or classifieds. But for a business, it's the same thing we do here. I deliver a much better unit economist on all my businesses and I require much lesser capital than anybody else.
01:00:22
Speaker
or ask you if a country with 85% of customers is going to sell their car, automatically or organically they come to my office. The dependence in marketing is not there. I get because of the lower back which has been the DNA of the company, I am able to fight all these battles with relatively lesser capital.
01:00:44
Speaker
Okay, okay. Amazing. So, you know, coming to capital, like 15 million, what was the journey? We raised money for various marketing initiatives because to build a brand, you need to be on TV. We sponsored Big Boss, we sponsored IPL. We invested into a deal with partner relationships. We did a lot of events.
01:01:11
Speaker
I think we have done a lot of things in the last round. In the last round, we were able to kind of be close to 800 million valuation. And as we speak now, we should be more than a billion now, but we have not done a fund raise, so it's not announced yet. But in the next fund raise, hopefully, we'll also cross that uni contact.
01:01:38
Speaker
Wow, amazing. And when are you planning? The next one is? This year. Okay. So you're already in talks. Yes. Next we are trying to, but otherwise, structurally, we are ready. We have plans ready, capital deployment plan is ready.
01:01:58
Speaker
And are you like operationally profitable? Like of course you need brand building failure investments and new bets failure you need investments, but like operational level. So to answer this question, as a group we have had different businesses in different stages of maturity. You have a business so heavily profitable today as you speak.
01:02:20
Speaker
Amarajo, ELA businesses, USCAR-related businesses, insurance and financial services are almost pre-given now. And the USCAR businesses where we are trying to do owning the transaction and whatnot, that is an investment-oriented business. So overall as a group, we have different plans for different businesses in terms of their growth margin, so a bit tough. And the capital days is linked to those deployment and marketing plans. Group wise, we lost things to answer you.
01:02:51
Speaker
But at a, so we measure contribution margins. So at contribution margins of each business, we slice and dice at that level. The contribution margin pay a bit of quality. Okay. What do you mean by contribution margin? If you can just like give me an example. An example is CM1, CM2, CM3, CM4.
01:03:18
Speaker
If you are in business, there is no direct cost. There is no direct cost. There is no direct cost. There is no direct cost.
01:03:27
Speaker
It is controlled by other horizontal functions, CM-3, and corporate cost, brand building, long-term brand building, CM-4. So there are definitions of how you classify your expenses across each contribution margin. And we have done that as a group. And we have targets. Let's say X business needs to be profitable at CM-2 level.
01:03:58
Speaker
So that level of calculated business model planning is done so that we are on a path to profitability at each business level. Otherwise the money sometimes corruption creeps in where you just keep on raising and keep on building and you never build a sustainable business.
01:04:18
Speaker
So this model that you're following of CM 1, 2, 3, 4, is this like a standard model or something? Standard model, but we kind of live by it. Okay. Okay. And are you still largely a Jaipur company? We are now a promoter standard of Jaipur, me and Amant.
01:04:41
Speaker
But most of the other leadership because of talent density has been hired in Gurgaon. So both Jaipur and Gurgaon are equally big centers now. Although people in Jaipur like to say, Jaipur is headquarters. What is your headcount now? We should be close to about 5000 people now.
01:05:00
Speaker
People like the mechanics to do the inspection and all of them are on payroll. What is your headcount comprised of? Basic core product and technology would be close to Chaso people 600 kyaspas. Leadership team and strategy saw dareso kyaspas.
01:05:29
Speaker
The call center will be around Pandrasal and Kaspas operations. Then there will be the content team, editorial team around Saw, Kaspas and Oki. But there will be stores, managers or runners and then inspectors on the accostities. Like you have people who go to dealers and you know, like onboard dealers and all that. So, first of all, I would like to say that the team will be close to Pandrasal.
01:05:58
Speaker
Which is very lean considering your size. Yes, lean but I think as and when and that I'm talking about future. If you look at let's say companies like Google.
01:06:19
Speaker
In the market like US, they don't have much team which goes to businesses and their products are built in a way where a company can sign up and do it themselves. In them, maybe you can do the same thing, sign up and do it yourself. But they also have a reseller team here, which basically assists in spreading the little literacy on their products.
01:06:43
Speaker
There will be a statesman here but eventually I think the dependency on people will reduce in years to come.
01:06:52
Speaker
So how do you manage 5,000 people? You know, you started in 2007-8 with 20 people. As a founder, how do you learn to manage 5,000 people? How do you move from that to managing 5,000?
01:07:20
Speaker
So standard practices are followed here. You make sure that there are in the reporting structures, there is no one person who has more than 10 people reporting to him. So that you are able to do a better job at managing your people. And group is divided into conglomerate structure. They are CEOs for each business unit. And they are empowered enough to take their own calls. So we don't micromanage as promoters into what
01:07:48
Speaker
the insurance CEO is doing or what the fiscal CEO is doing, they have to run their show in a way. We have a accelerating which all of us senior leadership team of about 10 people they meet every Monday, once a week to discuss their challenges and synergies or support required from each other. So our job is to actually run the SLT and the SLT run their teams and they have structures within their teams to run their teams.
01:08:15
Speaker
That's the video scalar organization so that it is not a promoter-led organization. So you're saying delegation and decentralization is critical to grow. Correct. And empowering people with the decision making and also giving them room to make mistakes.
01:08:34
Speaker
And at the same time, I think measurement is also important because you have put in place like these strong systems to measure performance and that measurement means people are held accountable. Of course, we are a very data-oriented organization from beginning and even today, I mean, we are very data-oriented. We discuss things on numbers and not on sentiments.
01:08:57
Speaker
Initially, your hiring was when you were interviewing like the first 20 people. How do you hire today? Today, again, we have a lot of hiring needs. So, this level of hiring needs. So, for each profile, there is an interview panel and two panels are selected. And there is a transparent process of hiring people.
01:09:26
Speaker
So, what is your role now? Between you and Amit, what is your role? Because now you have CEOs of each business, so what do you spend your time on? Because a lot of operational stuff is not really in your pity anymore. Is this growth and synergy amongst businesses? Amit's role is primarily that.
01:09:47
Speaker
And my role is primarily to put a product technology and support functions where all the businesses that are doing in their product and technology and the support functions, what are they doing and how are they performing and reviewing them. And I'm going to say really focus into the intuition leadership team that we have set up and the synergy across the businesses verticals that we have, the CEOs have.
01:10:10
Speaker
Okay, so your tech team is like centralized or split up like each business has their own tech team or there's like a central tech team which works on products for all businesses. Each business has its own tech team, but they report into a dotted metric structure, one to the business and one to the centralized CPT position that we have.
01:10:31
Speaker
Got it. Okay. And so do you also incubate startups like, or by incubation, you mean like, you know, planting seeds where you decide it's idea per experiment, then you hire a team and like, but only in the relevant spaces. So we in terms of which have synergy to our businesses now.
01:10:54
Speaker
As in you fund startups? We don't fund, we basically call our people entrepreneurs. So we have not funded any company as such that we have let's say own 30% of some company but we basically do either a full acquisition or a startup within the company which is aligned with the group.
01:11:16
Speaker
And you and Amit don't do angel investments. Typically most founders after a certain point also become angel investors. We have not done that so far. I think we have stayed away from that temptation. Why is that? Why do you use the word temptation there? I feel that till the point we give our investors a return. I mean, if I believe in a startup, why would I go to any other startup?
01:11:45
Speaker
it is my capital. So it's like, as a as a investor, you hedge your risks, right? Does it give to my investors that I put my capital into five other startups and not my startup? I don't think it's a cool message.
01:12:03
Speaker
Okay, that's a very unique perspective. But there'll be very few founders who will think like this. I mean, most of the big name founders are active angelic. I'm not saying that what they're doing is wrong. But it's a different way of thinking. And I'm not saying that I'll never do it. But until the point where I give my investors a return, I think once I start giving my investors a return on their investments, whose point I think I can also hedge my portfolio, but not before that.
01:12:32
Speaker
So what is your long-term exit for your investors? What are you thinking of? Are you thinking of an IPO? It is only logical choice for us. And what is the timeline you have on that? Internally, do you have a timeline? We used to think that 2023 could be the year.
01:12:56
Speaker
But Covid may almost be the case where public markets should be willing to look at us. So Covid has really helped some businesses. Are you one of those or has it been neutral or has it been negative?
01:13:18
Speaker
So obviously during the immediate COVID lockdown last year, for a good two months, business was standstill. But auto as a sector bounced back really well after the lockdown phase. So we also did well as a company in that space. So as we speak, last month was the best ever month in the entire history of the company. But again, this current situation has become very bad. So we don't know what's going to happen now.
01:13:46
Speaker
We do believe that personal mobility is going to rise. I mean, this is like a blip in the wave. Since the wave is at a high, things will slow down a bit. But once the wave goes down a bit, personal mobility will rise again faster. It will be one of the sectors to bounce back much faster than the others. OK. Are you at liberty to tell me what turnover you got this year, like this financial year, Joby, complete one?
01:14:16
Speaker
So we are on a hundred of more than a hundred million now. Okay. A hundred million annual turnover. Yes. And I'm not talking GMB. I'm talking about net margin to us. GMB is much larger. I mean, a lot of competitors talk about GMB in their turnover, which is. So if the vehicle value is 4,000,000 rupees and we get 10,000 out of it, we recognize as when I talk about our revenue
01:14:39
Speaker
I think Droom could GMV play because they had made some very massive claims. I remember reading a controversy about that. What do you see as the impact of EVs? Auto sector is at a stage where
01:15:00
Speaker
It will be unrecognizable because of these large global trends of electronic vehicles and like self-driving. How will that impact your business? Our business will stay unimpacted because the demand of buying a car is going to be there. We are on the customer side of the thing. So how that demand is fulfilled which is a technology side
01:15:28
Speaker
If that changes, it doesn't change the way we operate. In fact, it is going to benefit us in a way that online journeys will be much more smaller. And the buying decision will also be more crisper.
01:15:58
Speaker
and EV which is more of a battery motor component based vehicle and the need of servicing and all those things is also not there. So that will significantly change the car ownership experience. It will not change the car buying experience. But the dealership concept of both of us are fading. I mean imagine a time when mobile phone
01:16:24
Speaker
of values more than 50,000 online people with them mostly very few people buy it offline. There's still it's a very accepted fact that you can buy a mobile work online. So from that perspective, I think e bikes will catch on the trend first cars will catch it on later. But
01:16:46
Speaker
the car buying experience will start to change beyond dealerships. That's one thing that I feel. The car owner experience will be disrupted significantly with all these service shops and the spares and lubricants and all those things, looking at what to do to survive the change. And beyond that, I think all vehicles will be connected. Cell drive, I think, is not going to be
01:17:13
Speaker
very, very effective for India because people don't follow rules as such. So you expect people to behave unexpected in fashion. So a sensor based, till the point all cars are sensor based and they can talk to each other. Okay. Okay. But are you like also looking at getting into those kinds of fields like self-driving and all that? Like because your, your DNA is a tech company and these are all like tech innovations.
01:17:42
Speaker
There are no plans to look at those things. However, we did a connected vehicle component called Uplink, which is like a device you can plug into an old car and then you can get your car statistics into mileage and driving and routes and coverages and drive quality and whatnot through that device. It's a new startup which you've incubated within the company.
01:18:05
Speaker
So, this would be for like fleet owners where they... You could also retail it. You could also select to retail fleet owners. And you can also, as an individual, own that small device. If you don't have a connected car, you can buy the device. All cars come with an OBD port. This OBD port, we have a device plus car though. It will draw power from your battery and not drain it out and give you vehicle statistics on your app.
01:18:34
Speaker
So that's how you build a unicorn from Jaipur. And don't forget to use car decor for all things related to car ownership.