You have an app named ‘Eco Ninja’. How will this app help in increasing the branding and visibility of Droom?

Available on the app stores, the Eco app enables sellers to schedule comprehensive automobile inspections from highly trained and certified professionals called Ninjas. The inspection conducted using Droom’s proprietary methodology covers an exhaustive list and generates a comprehensive auto inspection report. This digital report will help the sellers and buyers the most informed decisions. Droom has partnered with Carnation to reach out to empower the technicians in 36 cities and allow Eco users access to Carnation’s extensive network of workshops and skilled technicians. Eco Ninja is becoming the most trusted app with a significant number of downloads.

Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. What is the toughest and most difficult part of this journey?

An innovative bent of mind and the tenacity to overcome challenges are required qualifications for any founder looking to attract investments. I believe that technology plays an extremely crucial role in creating winning ventures, and supports founders who believe in frugality and economic effort as a means to achieve success.

Some details on Droom’s funding...

Automobile-focused marketplace Droom has raised $16 million (INR 100 crore) funding in Series A led by Lightbox. The company has utilized the funds to add 20 automobile and 12 service categories hosting over 50,000 sellers and 200k listings in 18-24 months. Droom also plans to expand into South East Asia by early 2016. The first round of funding for Droom was led by Beenos. Droom is on its way to double its headcount over the next few months by hiring talent from leading institutes for functions like technology, marketing and customer support.

A leader you admire.

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Welch.

You are also a serial entrepreneur and an early-stage investor. What do you look for while investing? Which are your most promising investments?

I have always believed that any business idea, no matter how novel, is only as strong as the people driving it. I have invested in Wydr, a performance based wholesale marketplace. It fits in perfectly into my vision of game-changing ventures and has the potential to aggregate the wholesale market at an unprecedented scale.

What are your future plans?

From a revenue of nearly INR 900 crore from 3,400 transactions in 2015-16, Droom is targeting INR 3,000 crore worth of gross revenues by March 2017 and INR 15,000 crore by the end of 2018. With a 12% annual growth, India’s automobile sector is expected to expand from USD 125 billion now to USD 250 billion by 2020.

Online transaction in this sector is also expected to increase from 0.25% now to 8% by 2020. We are targeting 50-60% of this business, worth about USD 300 million. Droom is looking to further expand its operations to add 20 automobile and 12 service categories hosting over 50,000 sellers and 2,00,000 listings in the next 18-24 months. Droom will expand categories as well as geographies in the coming time.

Your views on the new bill on FDI in e-commerce.

I have welcomed the government’s move on bringing further clarity on FDI in marketplaces. However, marketplaces were never out of compliance of India’s FDI. As marketplaces truly work, they are no different than Infosys and Wipro for they provide technology and ecommerce services against buying and selling items. A well run marketplace is a technology, platform and services company vs retail or ecommerce company. Marketplaces are empowering 20 million SMEs to sell online and participate in the retail revolution of India versus sitting in the sideline because they do not have capital or technological know-how comparable to large corporations. I welcome wholeheartedly the further clarification that the government is providing.

A management lesson your learnt while in college which has worked for you in real life too?

Of the many lessons that I have learnt, is that founders need to be strongly motivated by a cause, as opposed to those driven by quick money, have the vision to identify an addressable opportunity and the clarity of purpose for optimum thematic leverage.

What are your best innovations so far?

Some of our best innovations comprise the following:

Orange Book Value: Droom’s Orange Book Value is a technically advanced engine that does comprehensive algorithmic calculation to give you a fair market value for the vehicle you are willing to buy. Orange Book Value (OBV) is India’s first algorithmic pricing engine to calculate the fair market value of any used vehicle. Right valuation of a pre-owned vehicle has always been a strenuous task for both buyers and sellers and OBV has been especially designed keeping this in mind. The long term vision of developing OBV has been to determine the valuation of every vehicle on Droom – from bicycles to planes.

Full Circle Trust Score: Droom’s Full Circle Trust Score is based on Droom’s proprietary technologies and algorithms that take into account trust factors that are important while buying used automobiles, such as auto inspection, warranty, verified seller, attractiveness of pricing for buyer, and level of disclosures by the sellers.

Droom’s Full Circle Trust Score will allow buyers to develop more objective assessment and comfort around the vehicles they are considering buying. Our Full Circle Trust Score is equally attractive for sellers who want to adopt best practices and offer nothing but the best to the buyer community. Seller listings with higher trust score will automatically emerge as winners on Droom’s marketplace.

Eco App: Eco is India’s most advanced, independent, objective and unbiased auto inspection and verification service provider. Inspection is performed using Eco’s proprietary methodology by professionals. The inspection checklist is mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive covering all the important points needed in verifying or inspecting a vehicle.

Once inspection/ verification is ordered by a customer, the service will be delivered at their doorstep at a convenient time as specified by the customer. Post the completion of inspection/ verification, a digital report is delivered to the customer that contains all details.