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.
1. Compared to prices of spare parts available off the shelf,
are your prices lower? How many spare parts companies have you tied up with? Do
you upfront buy the products from them and stock them or is it only picked up
when there is a demand for it?
We
do offer discounts on SparesHub.com but only occasionally. We offer most of our
products on M.R.P. Most of the physical stores also offer parts on M.R.P., but
due to the unorganised nature of the industry, many counterfeit parts are sold
off to innocent customers, in the disguise of excessive discounts. This is
where our sourcing from authorised distributors and reputed suppliers come in
play and we are able to offer genuine spare parts to the customers.
We
have tie-ups with companies like Monroe (U.S. brand for suspension parts) and
Tata Auto Components to make their entire part range available on
SparesHub.com. We have access to their dealer network and warehouses across
India so that the availability of spare parts is not a problem. Our deep network of retailers, distributors
and suppliers, allows SparesHub.com to stock minimal inventory and buy parts on
real time basis and cater to orders.
You also mentioned that there is demand from tier 2 and tier
3 cities and towns....now is that heartening, because as automobile penetration
gets deeper, I am sure you can hope to get more orders from these smaller
places. But what about big cities etc...is there a demand from here too?
The
genesis of starting SparesHub.com was that tier-2 and tier-3 cities have
premium luxury cars like Mercedes, BMW & Audi but do not have any
authorised service center within a radius of 200 kms. The problem is equally
true for Skoda, Volkswagen and other European companies. These car owners
obviously need spare parts for their cars. This geographical asymmetry can be
best solved by internet and e-commerce companies like us.
Simultaneously,
customers from cities like Delhi and Mumbai come on SparesHub.com because they
value the convenience and are assured of the authenticity of the replacement
parts that they buy. Urban educated
people are more comfortable buying things online rather than going to Kashmere
Gate market in Delhi or Opera House market in Mumbai.
1.
Is your site looking for more partnerships and fund infusion
to make it stronger so that your reach too spreads in the country?
SparesHub.com
is now looking to scale the operations that we have built so far. Given the
large market size, we have to be aggressive to cater maximum customers. Hence,
we do plan to raise venture capital investment this year. Our e-commerce marketplace model is asset
light and there is comparatively less competition in our product category in
e-commerce as of now.
Please give me a background note on your company with
regards to the people behind it, the places you operate from etc
We
three friends started SparesHub.com about 15 months ago. All three of us have
worked in automobiles companies before and are car enthusiasts to the core. I
have worked at Mercedes Benz, my friend Arijit Chakraborty has earlier worked
with Tata Motors and Diptanu Bhadra has worked at Honda Motors. We all are engineers
and post-graduates in management which enable us to understand the technical as
well as the business nuances of automobiles spare parts. We started in Pune as it is a major
automobile manufacturing hub and due to proximity to Mumbai. Currently we have
our team in Pune, Mumbai and Nagpur which will soon expand to cover top 15
cities of India as our supplier base expands across India.
Do share with me your revenue projections for the coming
years
We are experiencing good growth rates
since past six months – both in terms of number of customers as well as number
suppliers on our platform. We are
currently offering 15,000+ part numbers on our website across all car models.
Our aim for this year is to reach 5 lakh+ part numbers and reach Rs. 10 crores
in revenues by December across all automobile categories. We are very excited
to pursue this goal.