Car deals @ carwale

I remember brainstorming with a friend about 2 years ago regarding the usefulness of a used car site in context of the Indian market. The biggest problem in and deterrent to thinking further along those lines was the potential difficulty in engaging sellers to come online to sell their goods. Another problem was attribution of the sales done through us. Carwale has definitely proven us wrong.

Search result at Carwale

255 Used cars to choose from in the Rs3,00,000 to 4,00,000 price range in the city of Mumbai is a huge collection. I do not have numbers to prove this but no physical dealer is likely to match up to that kind of a product catalog. The numbers in Delhi were even better. I'm putting up Mumbai as an interesting average search result for the site. The site claims to have more than 10,000 used cars on sale.

To say that sites like Carwale are inspired is an understatement. They are the genre of sites which pick up a successful model of business in the US and apply the same to the Indian market. Sites like Autobytel, Edmunds, Carsdirect have been successfully implementing on the same idea in the US for ages. While the ideas for these "inspired" sites may not be totally novel, good implementations of useful solutions can prove to be successful businesses.

Carwale: Inspired but useful

Carwale offers a comprehensive set of tools - To calculate the approximate price of a used car, dealer locator, Car comparisons, loan comparisons, approximate insurance premium calculator and EMI calculator are a few of them. A strong user community is actively contributing to car reviews and forums.

The site is good at narrowing down choices for the customer and moving him towards a purchase. The Recommend Car section asks questions like a dealer would ask - What is your budget? Are you more concerned with performance, resale value, comfort or economy? Are you very tall and would like a lot of leg/floor room? The tool then generates recommendations for buying a car based on your inputs.

Users would miss a similar tool for the used car section. A user will be highly lost on getting 255 cars in his budget to choose from!!

Carwale has their eyes on numerous avenues to generate revenue. They generate leads for new cars, car insurance and car finance. They charge various subscription and brokerage charges from used car dealers. The site displays ads for cars and insurance companies and will be valuable property to advertise at for these companies.

In all Carwale is a site all set to take full advantage of the growing base of Internet users in India.

Keep up the good work Carwalo!!

Cheers :)