Prasoon is the CTO and co-founder of FirstRide. He is determined to bring a revolution in the automobile industry in India. Business skills run in his vein as his family is actively involved in business and he himself started doing business of electronic parts when he was just eight years old.
He has a great mind for technology, he is an engineer and has worked with one of the most successful startups like Redbus as Performance Engineer, The Media Ant as Head of Engineering. ClickIndia(IndiaMart) as Research Engineer. He was also actively involved in his own business during his school and college time so he has great marketing skills too. He has a big list of achievements and he also led FirstRide to get selected for funding from JFDI, which is a Singapore based seed accelerator.
Keeping aside his achievements he is a socialite too who has done several events which promotes road safety and make people aware of traffic rules.
Q -In your own words tell me about FirstRide.
We started in 2012. Most of our operations were in Chennai. Just before starting the company we have done a small auto expo cum Test drive Festival, where we exhibited many cars, In this event customers just don’t see the Cars but they get the opportunity to test drive it. Which has never been done before in any auto expo. Because we believe that test drive is most important part in the process of purchasing a new car. Event had a huge response and immediately after the event dealers were ready to collaborate and work with us that is when we incorporated the company. Also we started small call center, to talk to the customers and understand their requirement and give them information about different cars and also for scheduling test drive cars. Our main focus was on test drive. Customer can book multiple test drive from different brands and we deliver the test drive car at the doorstep from the nearest dealer. We had tied up with dealers and manufacturers of Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi. Great thing about our product is that customer can receive multiple test drive of different cars at their doorsteps at the same time and compare multiple cars from different brands side by side. Which is not possible currently, as today customer has to contact with multiple dealers if he wants to do the same thing and still cannot compare side by side. This was the whole idea to begin with. In future for taking car loan one can go directly through our website and apply for loan so that customer don’t have to search for loans on other websites and save your time which they will invest in bank to take loan.
Q-How you came up with the idea of FirstRide ?
This is not my idea. This idea is of Vijay(CEO and co-founder of FirstRide) an auto enthusiast right from his childhood. He was running a successful used car and bike business from his college days. When he came to Bangalore he started with mobile wallet service but he was not quite successful in that. Then he thought of doing business in the field in which he was interested and has deep knowledge and that was automobile industry. After doing research on automotive world we found that India is going to become the third largest auto retailer in the world and it is going to have highest growth. The current system in India is inefficient to sell that much numbers of cars. And found a great opportunity for disruption.
Q-Why did you go for automobile industry. Are you an auto enthusiast?
Yes, I am an auto enthusiast. In India right now 2.5 million cars are sold annually but it will be increased to 10 million by 2020 so this is the right time to solve the problem in automobile industry and now people are willing to buy and sell things online and day-by-day the ticket size on online purchase is increasing.
Q- What motivated you for this ‘out of the box’ idea?
Car is the second highest purchase of a person in his lifetime. And with growing number of middle class families more and more are looking to buy cars, and the current generation does not have patience to go through the typical showroom process, this is a great opportunity for innovation in the space and this is going to happen and we will be the first one to do it.
Q- How do you get your Customers?
we get our customers from different sources that includes our website, android app. We have also created a third party API which can be used by any high traffic car informative website and also via bloggers who have high fan following but no fruitful medium to monetize it.
Q- which markets are you going to target?
We are majorly going to target India since it is going have the highest growth in the coming years followed by Indonesia and Thailand since all of them are emerging markets and current car penetration there is less than 2 percent of the total population and have similar problems.
Q-How you are helping the society through your company?
Car has always been a symbol of social upgrade in India, it speaks in volumes about who you are and how you want people to see you. We make it easier for consumers to buy and maintain cars. Keeping aside our car trading we have done several events which promotes road safety and make people aware of traffic rules like –
Independence day ride(2014)- About 1000+ riders went for peace ride.
Helmet safety and road safety guide-Where we invited Indian Book of Record.
Independence day ride(2015)- 2000+ bikers participated in this event.
Q-How you manage to convince your family for your startup and were they comfortable with it?
As I have started many business earlier also they always had an Idea that I am interested in business But since startups are very different from small business what I use to do earlier. Initially I did not tell them but later after giving examples of some successful startups I convinced them, the good thing is they have faith in me and they believed in right since childhood, which helped me a lot. When I started FirstRide and left my previous job at Redbus they were surprised that why I am leaving a high paying job and going for startup in which initially there will be no salary. The beauty of startups is that you are not the only one who is going to invest time and money. There will be investors, founders and your team members all working together for the success of the company. I know one fact that if something goes wrong I can do any business or a regular job and earn by daily bread.
Q-How FirstRide is different from other car-trading site?
Other sites mainly are either informative website providing information about cars and their focus is on revenue from Ads, lead generation, used cars and we are transaction focused. We don’t just believe in selling cars we provide customer with life long services starting from test ride then providing them option to buy new car, buy accessories and other maintenance services. We want to be throughout the journey of the customer and we are trying to revolutionize the automobile industry.
Q-Why do you think that people will prefer to buy car from FirstRide rather than buying it from a showroom?
The problem is not in going and buying the new car, problem arise when you are going to make a decision. To experience the car and to see the showroom you have to visit different dealers and showrooms for getting insight of different cars, which is big pain. Then also they will not send the car at the scheduled time. In FirstRide decision-making time is reduced because one can compare different cars from various brands side by side. Customer can also buy the desired car at a click of button by paying small booking amount online. Pay remaining at the time of delivery at their doorstep. The new generation customer wants everything at a click of a button and doesn’t have patience to go through the typical showroom process. Currently an average person takes 4 months to buy a car and we want to bring this process to 4 days, which includes all the paper work time.
Q-What you will implement in near future that will give FirstRide a good raise and that will be beneficial for both customer and the FirstRide?
We will be launching a mobile app that will give our customer information about the critical parts of their car. Also the next level would be to improve the experience of the user and by understanding his/her driving pattern through OBD reader. By reducing his maintenance cost by notifying the customer for maintenance at the right time and also notifying what needs to fixed in the car so that it’s no more a black box while servicing the car. This data will also help manufacturers to build better cars in the future. Auto component industry will also get benefited from this data as this can be used to forecast demand of various parts.
Q-Are you not afraid of cab services in India like Ola Cabs and Uber?
No, I am not afraid of them, Lot of consumers have shifted form bus and auto to cab and they are enjoying the ease and luxury, I am happy about them because they make people aware of convenience and luxury of car which build fascination to buy one, end up buying a new car from us.
Q-What difficulties you faced when you started FirstRide ?
It was difficult to gather a team. Specific to industry it was difficult to make dealers understand that how technology will help to do business and how we can manage multiple customers. Also making them understand that technology was quite difficult. Talking to manufacturers was also a difficult task as they don’t talk unless you are a big company, which we are not.
Q-Have you faced any problem from government sector when you started FirstRide?
No, there was no such difficulty as we know the laws and they have particular laws for our industry so it was pretty normal. We had initially talked to many industry experts and manufacturers, so they were there to guide us about the how automobile industry works.
Q-Anything that made you disappointed initially and made you feel that you cannot stand any longer in this industry?
There was no such disappointment because I already knew that it was not easy to do and particularly about automobile industry, after research we found that it is a tough industry to work in. Apart from that up and downs are part of life and we have to have to handle it. Also I believe in the idea of our company. I have done all the research from research firms of India and abroad in automobile industry so I was aware of problems and issues, which I would face. Problems will arise only if I don’t have faith or If I am not doing my work with dedication.
Q-How you refresh yourself from this hectic work schedule?
All my hobbies are actually gone off the track(Laughs). Meditation and some kind of exercise is what I prefer. Also I love cooking, so sometime I cook to beat the stress and also travelling and interacting with people. This interaction part helps me to improve my convincing skills as it has helped me to break the sales record in my previous job in Kolkata.
Q-Which city do you prefer for business in Asia and customer of which city do you think are more cool?
I will prefer Delhi for business as it is more revenue generating. Bangalore customers are cool and they understand technology much better, so they are better customer. We have incorporated in Singapore too. But not planning to do active business anytime soon
Q-How you define success?
Success is the opportunity to learn more. If you are successful you will earn more money and this money can be used to learn more than what you have already learned. Take example if you are buying a Ferrari then you will be able to learn how to drive a Ferrari. The more you learn, more you get the opportunities. If you are successful you will share your ideas with people who are expert and they will pay attention to your idea and share their own Ideas and from them you will get a better vision and more knowledge then what you possess earlier. Every one is running behind learning. One makes money to get experience, basic needs will be fulfilled with much less money but when you get more money you get more experience and you will learn how to use these money to learn more experiences.
Q-What do you think are keys to success for an entrepreneur.
It is vey important for a person to know what he/she is building and also the time of starting the business. You should be sure of what you are doing and when an entrepreneur has faith in his ideas and ideology, every member of his team will have faith in him/her. Secondly timing is very important. If you see the history many startups have failed and after some years any other startup with the same Idea is successful. This is only because the timing was wrong for the first startup. Either customer was not able to understand that idea or at that time this particular business was not having good market. I have seen people who are 12 years old and are successful because they implemented their ideas at the right time.
