Technology has been advancing with time and so are the new consumers. As everybody has moved online, the quest of getting the best online has become the need. Droom is India’s first and only online marketplace for buying and selling new and used automobiles. At over 65% of the automobile transactions market share online, Droom is the largest auto portal in India. Droom is the only fully transactional online platform enabling an end-to-end transaction between buyer and seller. Our Full Circle Trust Score, Buyer’s Protection, Orange Book Value, Droom History and Eco Inspection addresses all the buyers’ pain points and hassles involved in the stressful process of buying or selling a used vehicle. The platform offers a broad catalogue of vehicles and deals in all automobilecategories - everything from bicycles to planes. In an interaction with Pitch team, SANDEEP AGGARWAL, Founder, Droom shared his insights on the current online automobile marketplace. Excerpts:- How did the idea of bringing automobile industry and technology together strike in your mind? Droom is my second venture, I was a bit more methodical in choosing what I wanted to do after ShopClues. I came up with 52 ideas while being in Silicon Valley, each one of them I thought would make a billion- dollar company in India. After comparing and filtering them, I was left with just two ideas and eventually, Droom made it to the final decision. At Droom, our objective is to address each and every possible pain point in buying and selling a used automobile in India. We are a digital marketplace for automobiles which is leveraging a tech-driven approach to address buyer/seller pain points and to enable end-to-end transactions through its platform. We offer a comprehensive portfolio for new and used vehicles. We have successfully leveraged technology to conceptualize and roll out our ecosystem tools that can offer a better buying experience to our customers. The ecosystem tools utilize the best of technology to meet the business objective of not only creating India’s largest online marketplace for automobiles but also providing end-to-end transaction platform to customers. What algorithms do you look at Droom, when it comes to people using online services right now? If we look at the algorithm of the used and new automobile industry, the automobiles’ category includes everything from two-wheelers, four- wheelers, trucks, and commercial vehicles to new and used vehicles, auto loans, insurance, and warranty. So, the entire automobile industry and ancillary services account for $180 billion annually, making India the 3rd largest market in the world after China and USA.  Out of that $180 billion, roughly $30 billion is in services. So, $150 billion will be new and used including two-wheelers, four-wheelers, recreational and commercial vehicles. Now if we see the pattern in the used vehicle industry, used cars and used two-wheelers would be roughly $60 billion. For every new car, 1.5 used cars are sold in India. For every new two-wheeler, 1.8 used two- wheelers are sold in India. The world’s best ratio is Germany, where for every new car, 3 used cars are sold. And second, best is USA, where for every new car, 2.6 used cars are sold. The worst ratio among the top 10 countries is China where for every new car only 0.4 used cars are sold. In terms of units, 3 million new cars and 4.5 million used cars are sold in India. 18 million new two-wheelers and roughly 27 million used two-wheelers are sold in India. So, we are talking about 45 million two-wheelers  making India the largest two- wheeler market and in terms of cars, the third largest auto market in the world. Out of that $180 billion overall markets, roughly $1billion is online. 50,000-60,000 cars are sold online in India and 100,000-120000 two-wheelers are sold online. What measures do you take at Droom to keep it tech-oriented yet simple for your customers? We are trying to solve all the existing and upcoming problems with the help of technology, AI and Machine learning. We always focus on our customer’s demands and problems they are facing in buying and selling a vehicle online and accordingly we develop the technology to counter them. Being in automobile domain we experienced a big issue in getting the fair market price of a used vehicle, so we internally developed Orange book Value (OBV)India’s first and only algorithmic pricing engine where one has to just enter the make, model, trim and some necessary details of the vehicle and you get the fair market price of the vehicle in just 10 seconds. Similarly step by step we experienced a couple of other problems our customers were facing such as History of used vehicle was a bigger problem so we developed Droom history which contains the history of 200 crore vehicle available in the country, we have developed an app based auto inspection service called Droom ECO where our technician inspect a vehicle on 121 checkpoints and provide a comprehensive inspection report that also on your doorstep. We witnessed another big issue in used vehicle transaction which was a loan, so we developed a tool called Droom credit, where anyone can opt for the loan on a used vehicle. Droom credit is a completely tech-based tool and provides paper free loan approval in less than 30 seconds.using OBV, 10k+ auto dealers across India adopting it, we have used 7.8Lakh transactions worth approximately 7,730 crores to validate OBV pricing. OBV covers 50k+ products for cars, bikes, scooters, bicycles, and planes. OBV is available at Droom or as destination Website, iOS, and Android App, OBV Widget for 3rd party bloggers and a print edition. In the era of the tech-driven ecosystem, how would you differentiate droom from other platforms like cardekho? At Droom, we are very passionate about bringing in greater trust in the buying and selling experience for any new or used automobile. What is unique about us is our focus on delivering end-to-end consumer- centric automobile solutions through technology. We are offering a truly 21st-century experience within the Indian market. Congratulations on the launch OBV. Please tell us more about it and how it is leveraging droom’s market? The process to determine the value of pre-owned vehicles has always been difficult as it was completely dependent on individual evaluation parameters without having a statistical or scientific perspective. However, with the launch of the unique online tool OBV, buyers and sellers can come to a conclusive consensus in terms of pricing. OBV is India’s first and only algorithmic pricing engine to find out the fair market value of any used vehicle under 10 seconds for free. Orange Book Value (OBV) is a simple yet extremely technology and data science-based online tool to give users value of a used automobile under 10 seconds. With OBV, you never have to pull a number from the hat or guess a used vehicle pricing but a scientific way to know the fair market value. And the best part is OBV is completely free. Since we launched OBV, we have seen 247 million+ pricing queries automobile industry through our proprietary innovations such as Orange Book Value, Droom History, Full Circle Trust Score and ECO app. These innovations have allowed us to improve the trust factor associated with buying and selling vehicles online and have heralded a pricing advantage to both buyers and sellers through advanced algorithms and data science. This adds great value to the end-usertransactional experience and has served to differentiate us from the competition. Published in the January 2019 issue of Pitch Magazine