Cars24 shuts down spare parts platform citing buyer mindset
The pilot programme Inspare was set up in Delhi-NCR to facilitate doorstep delivery of spare parts to automotive workshops.
Used car marketplace Cars24 has shut down its pilot programme Inspare which was set up in Delhi-NCR to facilitate doorstep delivery of spare parts to automotive workshops.
In a LinkedIn post, Cars24’s CEO Vikram Chopra said workshops that had tie-ups with insurance companies trusted the company’s service. However, for repairs not covered by insurance, workshops had the freedom to choose the spare parts supplier; here they chose the services of a local distributor over the firm’s services.
“The local distributor still wins not because they’re faster or cheaper but because they are known, flexible and trusted over years of chai and cash cycles,” Chopra noted.
According to the company, Inspare achieved 10-12% gross margins and scaled to Rs 2.5 crore per month in some parts of NCR, all without “over-hiring or burning excess capital.”
“We made the right call to start and the right call to shut it down when the bet didn’t hold. That’s how it should work. This wasn’t a failure. It was clarity, earned the hard way,” the post said.
The development comes almost a month after the Peak XV-backed company laid off 200 employees amid restructuring efforts by the firm.
In recent times, Cars24 has been diversifying its product offerings. Earlier this year, it launched its credit platform LOANS24 to facilitate vehicle financing. It has also launched a platform that aggregates dealerships and original equipment manufacturers to streamline vehicle purchase.
The company has also partnered with Kunal Shah-led CRED to allow users to sell cars directly through the CRED platform via CRED Garage.
Edited by Swetha Kannan