Given the high involvement that people have with their automobiles, its only time before automotive portals become mainstream like established portals dealing in jobs, matrimonials, travels etc. Leading this trend in India is Carwale, a Mumbai based automotive site that, short of allowing you to actually buy the car online, has pretty much everything you may need with respect to your car. And proof that there is inherent potential in this space in general and in Carwale in particular, is the high profile SeedFund picking up a 30% stake in this portal.
Some people may question the role, an automotive portal can play in the actual car buying experience. Since for many a people, other than their homes, cars are probably the most valuable purchase, and they would like to physically interact with the car before they make any decision. Check out the comments on this ContentSutra post, that examines exactly this issue.
I think there are two specific roles an automotive portal can play. Because purchasing a car is a high involvement decision, there is the need to do an exhaustive research beforehand. The second role is the bringing together of prospective buyers and sellers of second hand cars.
And both these needs seemed to be addressed well in Carwale. In fact, I think its car recommendation tool is very well designed, in the way it elicits customer preferences. I gave it a dry run and found the form mirroring my own mental model, about how I would go about choosing my own car. I was pleasantly surprised. Give it a one minute try and decide for yourself.
Carwale is loaded with multiple features and tools. It has a used car valuation guide for 10 major Indian cities and a classified section for posting ads for second hand cars. Besides, there is an exhaustive database of car guides/tips, car reviews, matched direct comparisons, test drives reports, loans and insurance guides et al. Something else that caught my attention was this blog which seems to have a very credible look & feel. According to Mohit Dubey, Carwale’s CEO, Carwale has the most traffic amongst all the Indian automotive sites and is ranked amongst the top 100 Indian websites by traffic (Alexa).
Something worth knowing is that Carwale has developed a MiniERP sofware and distributed it free to various car dealers. This MiniERP software helps dealers manage their operations. In return, Carwale gets an access to their inventory of new and used cars and the car buying/selling prices, which is posted automatically on Carwale. This sounds quite a remarkable approach and something that must have involved a fair bit of software skills besides the negotiation skills required in convincing dealers to adopt it. This dealer data along with the consumer classifieds has helped Carwale create a dynamic/updated used car valuation guide. Carwale feels that that this database has the potential to emerge as the Used car blue book for Indian car market.
In terms of the website itself, Carwale could consider improving the site’s usability and rationalizing some of the textual clutter.
On a different note, this is also another example of the vertical fragmentation of the online classifieds market into constituent areas- jobs, matrimonials, automobiles etc. One factor that is actually helping this continuing fragmentation is the absence of a good alternative in the online classifieds space, which has a slew of mediocre options (Craigslist clones) and no default choice.
MapmyIndia has added a killer feature called ‘Embed Map’, that allows you to add a detailed and interactive map snippet, to your blog or website. You can also zoom/pan in or out. It works pretty much like the embeddable media players that are ubiquitous on the web/blogosphere. All you need to do is to copy the code snippet from the MapmyIndia site and paste it into your website’s html code or simply insert into your blog post. As with their maps, this service is free.