Supercars aims to give a 'Nitro Boost' to students' careers in the luxury auto segment
Supercars aims to expose engineering, diploma, and management students in India to tech and non-tech training of high end luxury cars by holding workshops on demand. Their goal is to bridge the technology gap and make students and fresh graduates aware about the luxury car segment. Their services can be categorized into four segments: training, counselling, sales, and manpower.Through training at independent training centres, they aim to guide students, recent graduates, and job seekers about the different aspects of a luxury car. This will equip them to secure jobs in companies such as BMW, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Mercedes Benz, Porsche, and Rolls Royce.
The course provides counselling and guidance to students to help them chose their desired branch of study based on their interest and aptitude. Supercars experts also aim to provide unbiased advice to prospective luxury car buyers on technical, financial, and other aspects.
Says Jitendra, Founder of Supercars: “Industry ready manpower is the need of hour. We are also developing on manpower resourcing for luxury auto-dealers as per needs.”
The business model includes: revenue through different training services for students, commission from auto partners on vehicle purchase, students’ counselling session fees.
Supercars has got appreciation on its website from auto industry leaders like Mark Allison, International High Performance Driving and Audi Driving Experience Instructor; and Pankaj Dubey, Country Head and MD, Polaris India.
Starting up
Jitendra Kindra is a mechanical engineer and an alumnus from IIM Lucknow’s, Management Development Programme. He was associated with Audi, Gurgaon for more than two years, and was heading their department of pre-delivery inspection stockyard for new cars. He had also been associated with the Porsche centre Gurgaon workshop from its inception. He was more inclined towards training and has certifications from Audi AG in Efficiency and Sportiness, Audi Kick Start from Ingolstad Germany and Accident Cordination from Volkswagen group India..
Supercars came out as a result of a personal passion for luxury cars and the struggles he faced early on in life. Jitendra hails from the small but historic city of Jhansi and was born in a in a modest family, and could only dream about driving a car. Jitendra says,
In my city those owning a Maruti car were considered well-off and owning a car remained a dream.
He started his career with Audi, and the first car he ever drove was an Audi A6. He is a firm believer of Bill Gates’s statement: “If you are born poor it’s not your mistake, but if you die poor it’s your mistake.”
Jitendra believes that the luxury vehicle market will rise rapidly in India with the number of high net worth individuals also increasing. “If Germans can count their GDP on automotive industry, why can’t we?” asks Jitendra.
He found that though many students and graduates were passionate about luxury cars and had hands-on technical know-how, but only graduates from India’s premier colleges were getting the opportunity to work with such brands. He would like companies to hold a separate common entrance test for graduates from engineering colleges to get into automobile companies. This would give another chance to students who had earlier not performed well in their engineering entrances and had not been able to get into India’s premier colleges.
At the age of 26, Jitendra decided to quit his job and start Supercars in mid- January 2015, with the aim of giving something back to the student community through his experiences with luxury cars. Recently Supercars was selected among top 30 startups at a seed fund competition organised in association with CIIE IIM A at Thapar University in Patiala,Punjab.
The Supercars’ team consists of visiting professionals from luxury auto sector, students from IIT BHU, who train and guide students and student co-ordinators from Chandigarh and Delhi.
Future plans
The startup is currently bootstrapped through personal savings and is looking to raise funds. They had faced initial challenges in dealing with college administrations and convincing them in signing up for their offerings. But over time they have been able to convince institutions and students about the benefits by refining their strategies and approach. They are getting good response to their programs now and plan to scale up their services according to the demand.
Website: Supercars