Now book your next car’s test drives online with FirstRide.in
Buying a car isn’t simple – test drives, colour selections, followed by tonnes of paper work and what not.
Here’s a team that is trying to solve this problem by giving car buyers great comfort. Started by Vijay Kumar Reddy and Prasoon Agrawal, Firstride.in is a complete solution provider for all your car related requirements.
Both started the company with a mission to give users a seamless experience while buying cars. The unique platform offers total assistance to its customers during the complete life cycle of trying a car to owning one.
The process begins by arranging a test drive to help buyers choose the right car, getting car loans sanctioned, and assisting in insurance and post-sales services to facilitate the maintenance of the car. The team is trying to provide a very unbiased and customer-friendly approach during the whole process. They have made associations with various partners in the market to provide them critical information helping customers to make informed decisions.
When asked about the approach and ideology behind the venture, Vijay shared, “Over the years, the car buying market has turned from a seller’s market to a buyers’ market. The buyer today is smart, knowledgeable and clear on what his next purchase will be. Dealerships are now only avenues to touch and test their planned purchases. The traditional sales guy at the car dealership is dead. He is now replaced by data, knowledge, information and feedback from the Internet.”
Times are changing and so is the customer’s psychology towards buying things online. The surge in Indian e-commerce is a testimonial to the fact that Indian consumers want good quality products at their doorsteps with the least amount of inconvenience. Various reports have validated that consumers prefer to buy books and electronics the most among the rest of categories. A good question to ask here would be – ‘Why not buy a car online?’
Definitely in the near future we would be able to buy cars online and there are enough signs pointing towards that. Who can deny the fact that Snapdeal could sell Tata cars exclusively?
Sharing the same sentiment, Prasoon Agarwal said, “It’s time to buy cars online. Research online, book a test drive, and then buy it online.” Speaking further about their product, he said, “We have built a clean and user friendly website. We believe that test driving a new car is a very important step in the car buying process, after all car is the second largest purchase for most people. Test driving a car gives a good understanding of the car and its features. Today, the complete test drive booking process is manual and un-organized. We have built a system to map test drive vehicle inventory of all dealers in a city.”
At present, they are operational in Bangalore and moving forward they will expand to Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi.