AutoFurnish founders Chakit Khattar (left), Rupal Wadhwa (center), and Puneet Arora (proper)
In each adversity there lies the seed of an equal benefit, wrote Robert Collier, an American writer of self-help.
Placing Collier’s phrases into observe is New Delhi-based auto equipment manufacturing firm AutoFurnish.
Began by Puneet Arora, Rupal Wadhwa, and Chakit Khattar in 2012, AutoFurnish, which is an auto equipment manufacturing and ecommerce enterprise, is seeing growing demand for auto equipment regardless of India’s auto slowdown, and will get over 2000 day by day orders for its merchandise.
AutoFurnish is profiting from a declining business, which recorded its worst-ever gross sales in 20 years in 2019.
However how? The reply is easier than one may assume – AutoFurnish has a powerful concentrate on promoting to the pre-owned autos phase.
The Delhi-based firm, which has a producing unit in Malviya Nagar, claims it has a turnover of Rs 28 crore.
Unaffected by slowdown
The auto slowdown in India noticed an total sale of autos throughout classes decline 13.77 p.c between 2018 and 2019. Nevertheless, it doesn’t account for the gross sales of pre-owned autos. The pre-owned car market has remained largely unaffected by the auto slowdown.
Actually, growing ranges of formalisation and consolidation within the pre-owned automobile market have seen the phase develop considerably in the previous few years.
“The continued recession surprisingly doesn’t have any type of influence on the auto equipment sector. Your entire credit score goes to the rise of the second-hand automobile market,” says Puneet Arora, Founder and CEO, AutoFurnish.
He provides: “In a broader perspective, the pre-owned automobile market is without doubt one of the main components behind the declining gross sales of latest automobiles and the expansion of the automobile equipment market.”
Puneet Arora, Founder and CEO, AutoFurnish
AutoFurnish targets prospects who need to get monetary savings by buying pre-owned automobiles, and need to refurbish them by shopping for equipment.
“The automobile equipment market in India has come a great distance within the final couple of years. Quite a lot of innovation is occurring within the automobile equipment market. To satisfy the calls for of pre-owned automobile consumers and giving all of them premium options, auto equipment producers are leaving no stone unturned in bringing new expertise and innovation to match the options of latest automobiles,” the 39-year-old says.
He attributes this as the explanation why the auto equipment market is transferring at a constant tempo, and isn’t displaying indicators of slowdown.
How the concept was born
Puneet, who has an IT background, says he was impressed to grow to be an entrepreneur throughout his time at IIM Bangalore. In 2012, he met Rupal, whose household was within the auto equipment enterprise.
Puneet and Rupal realised the Indian auto equipment market was pretty unorganised, and there have been no giant and well-established manufacturers.
“There was potential to create a model so prospects might select to purchase a branded product for his or her autos. We noticed small and offline automobile equipment markets in Tier II and Tier III cities didn’t have an excellent vary of merchandise or manufacturers. This spelled a chance for us,” Puneet says.
The duo started how one can capitalise on this discovering. Puneet felt on-line digital advertising and marketing of auto equipment could be the obvious and profitable channel. However the concept acquired criticism. When the founders floated the concept to their mates, households, and native auto equipment sellers, they discovered that not many individuals accepted the concept of shopping for auto equipment on-line.
Nevertheless, this didn’t deter the founders. They noticed it as a chance to seize markets that had been quick changing into digitised. “This was the mindset of the market that we needed to alter, and located nice potential in retailing auto equipment in Tier II and Tier III cities via on-line channels,” he says.
AutoFurnish’s black mat automobile accent
In the identical 12 months, Puneet and Rupal began AutoFurnish by investing their very own cash to construct an ecommerce portal to promote auto equipment. In addition they listed the merchandise on numerous on-line marketplaces.
“We determined to start out as a self-funded firm and develop via incomes and reinvesting. It was a fusion of our technical and purposeful information, and we achieved good gross sales numbers by 2014,” Puneet says.
Chakit joined the duo, and in 2015, the founders determined to start out manufacturing the merchandise themselves, with an intention to fulfill the rising demand for top of the range auto equipment. However they may do that provided that that they had management over manufacturing.
To start with, AutoFurnish began making automobile seat covers, foot mats, polishes, dusters, using gear, bike fits, face masks, and so on., at a producing unit in Malviya Nagar. The corporate claims it went on to fabricate over 250 sorts of automobile equipment and over 100 sorts of bike equipment.
Deal with promoting on-line
Puneet’s agenda was to simplify the method of shopping for automobile and bike equipment. Moreover its personal web site, AutoFurnish’s new merchandise had been listed on Amazon India, Flipkart, and different on-line marketplaces.
“It was fairly a frightening process for consumers to go to aftermarket equipment shops and go to a number of retailers. We made it simple for them to get their arms on our vary of exterior, inside, automobile care, and magnificence equipment inside just a few clicks,” he says.
At this time, AutoFurnish is each a producing firm in addition to an ecommerce enterprise, and this has allowed it to promote on to shoppers.
After manufacturing, AutoFurnish lists the merchandise on-line – a course of which eliminates the necessity for middlemen or intermediaries. This enables the enterprise to promote at wholesale charges and move on a big value benefit to its prospects.
“By this M2C (manufacturing-to-consumer) mannequin, we will guarantee our merchandise should not solely of top quality and sturdy, but in addition mild on the shoppers’ pockets,” Puneet says, including that 1,800 out of two,000 day by day orders come from on-line channels.
AutoFurnish’s automobile physique cowl
Coping with the big quantity or orders is less complicated stated than accomplished. AutoFurnish confronted challenges in managing provide to cater to the demand that was coming in. To beat this, the corporate developed an ecommerce-centric ERP (Enterprise Useful resource Planning) system to assist handle stock.
The proprietary and copyrighted software program now helps AutoFurnish management and monitor completely different levels of an order – proper from procurement of uncooked materials, manufacturing, and warehousing to product itemizing and funds.
Puneet claims AutoFurnish enjoys a primary mover benefit within the auto equipment phase in India. He doesn’t determine rivals within the firm’s drive to grow to be a family title for auto equipment throughout Asia.
“We’ve got plans to increase AutoFurnish’s on-line and offline footprints past our present boundaries. We plan to create offline distribution channels throughout south and southwest Asian international locations and canopy main vehicle markets resembling Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia by 2022,” he says.
(Edited by Megha Reddy)