Nothing is more convenient than commuting in your own car. But owning a car always comes with the hassle of servicing it. People living in Metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Delhi, etc are suffering from a problem of finding a good car repair and maintenance center. Also many times it is time-consuming and hectic. If you go to Authorized Service Centers of your car, you have to pay a high cost. Multi-brand workshops on the other side do not follow the standard procedure to give you the best maintenance service.

Looking into the constantly growing demand of having a uniform, reliable and affordable car service solution under the Multi-Brand workshop segment, Mr. Saurabh Jadhav formed Otto Serves in 2018. Based in one of the busiest city in India, Mumbai Otto Serves brings a network of standardized automobile service centers. These centers are updated and offer quality repair and maintenance services at the best affordable price.

Otto Serves has started its services and it has started enrolling different workshops in its network list. There is about 6 Mumbai based workshop operating under the network of Otto Serves in present time. The company aims to add more 10 workshops in different regions of the city in coming months. Otto Serves also plan to grow and expand its network in major cities in the coming 18 months.

India is among the largest automobile market in the world that targets sales of approx 2.5 million passenger vehicles every year. As per Automotive Report 2020 by PwC Strategy and Booz & Co, India will become the 3rd largest automotive market by volume in the world till 2030.

THE WORKINGS:

Customers can book services like general service, car cleaning, A/C service and custom repair on the mobile application.Considering the increase in the use of mobile phone application, Otto Serves decided to begin with a mobile application. As of now, it offers the application for android but soon will be launching an iOS version too. The platform provides customers with Upfront pricing for each predefined service and provides a price quote for any kind of custom service after your vehicle is inspected. Customers can choose to pay online or by cash or card. Otto Serves currently services more than 300 car models including luxury and premium cars.

A GROWING UNORGANISED MARKET:

The service providers are not used to modern technology and asking them to adapt to it is not something that I would prefer, at least not at such an early stage. They are excellent service providers, and it is better that they stay as they are

The company knew that the tech adoption by the service providers was a challenge and was not necessary at such an early stage. “The service providers are not used to modern technology and asking them to adapt to it is not something that I would prefer, atleast not at such an early stage. They are excellent service providers, and it is better that they stay as they are” says the founder and CEO of Otto Serves.

A huge share of India Automobile Service market is managed and occupied by hundreds of unauthorized service centers. Maximum of them are working offline. One of the biggest issues is to get a good quality service and transparency in the services quoted to the customer.

Approx 40% of car service provider in top-tier cities are unorganized. A lot of startups is coming who aim to organize this and build up a platform that can offer customers the best solutions. Compare to them Otto Serves works and thinks differently. Ample of startups aim to bring these authorized and multi-brand service stations on their platform in the form of aggregator and let customers pick what they want. Otto Serves on the other side brings only the best service center on board by going through series of checkpoints. Our team inspects the service centers on many aspects of infrastructure, availability of equipment, service quality, etc.

Saurabh also admits that the experience for customers to book services from an app towards getting the car services is seamless but it is something new. And in the present scenario, a customer is not used to it. Under the present bootstrapped stage the team is working on optimizing the current operation and focuses more on strengthening customer’s base in Mumbai before moving to other cities.

As per a rough estimate, more than 12 million cars are outside warranty period in our country and the figure is going to cross 2 million every year. Around 40% of the service providers in the top-tier cities are under un-organized sector. There is a massive need for the rebuild and re-organize the market for better quality service and vehicular efficiency. “We aim to become that one-stop solution platform which will transform this segment,” says Saurabh.