1. Your e-commerce site for spare parts is presumably targeted
at garage owners, retailers and distributors and not individual vehicle owner,
is that right? What's been your experience till now?
Even
we thought that this would be the case when we started out, but our experience
of past 15 months of operations says that more and more Indian car owners are
now buying car spare parts online. Even internal parts like suspensions, brake
pads and engine components. They are much more aware of the parts that go
inside their car, the various brands available in the market and their price
points. So we have an almost equal mix of car owners and garage owners coming
on our website and buying on SparesHub.com. These customers come on our website
because they value the comfort and ease of buying online, the trust that they
would get only genuine parts delivered and the variety of parts on offer. We have multiple retailers and distributors
on our website who act as suppliers on our website and offer the spare parts of
which they are authorised distributors.
SparesHub.com
is a marketplace for automobile spare parts.
Even suppliers of spare parts for commercial vehicles, earth moving
equipment and road rollers have approached us to sell them on SparesHub.com.
As a business model what is the potential in terms of
revenue generation? Typically, what are the spare parts stocked by your
company? You also have a warehouse in Pune, do you have plans to open more of
these in the country?
The
Indian replacement parts market is currently about Rs. 36,000 crores, growing
at 7%-9% annually. Out of this, about 26% is passenger vehicles parts, 24% is
commercial vehicles parts, 48% are two wheeler parts and 2% is three wheeler
parts. For passenger vehicles we expect about 2% of this market to shift from
offline to online within the next three years. Thus, the online market size for
car spare parts is about Rs. 180 crores+. The offline to online shifting
percentage for two wheelers and commercial vehicles would be different. In
developed markets like US, Europe and others, about 5%-7% of the retail market
has already shifted online. So this shift will definitely happen in India as
well.
We
have a warehouse at Pune and Nagpur. Almost all of the registered sellers on
SparesHub.com have their own warehouses to maintain inventory of the parts.
Shock absorbers and struts, head-lights, tail-lights, brake parts and
electrical parts are the most active product categories on our website.
On the export front, is there a potential for your company?
If yes, how do you cater to that?
Since
India is a major car exporting country, there is substantial demand for their
spare parts from other countries. We have had Tata, Mahindra and Maruti
customers from Dubai, Sweden, France etc. approaching us for spare parts
requirement. We have catered to them,
but currently domestic market is our focus and not export market. The domestic
market in itself is so large that we would first like to establish ourselves in
India and then start exploring export market. The international spare parts
industry is more organised and is part number driven; whereas the Indian spare
parts industry is sample driven. Hence, Indian spare parts industry is more
challenging.