Indian SaaS Segment: Opportunities And Potential

Automotive has always been a very lucrative industry which sometimes makes the dream come true of the middle-income group or matches with ambitions of the upper class. The Industry itself has seen drastic changes in the terms of technology like engines going from BS4 to BS6 to reduce carbon emissions.

Similarly, in automotive a niche business called the after-sales service or repair sector has seen a boom with many players coming. To get a view of the industry we spoke to Vivek Sharma Founder and CEO of Fixcraft a car repair service company about his business.

How is your business recovering right now after the two years of Covid-19?

Yes, Covid 19 affected our business as it cannot be done virtually. However, during and after the Covid we have followed the guidelines prescribed by the government. It helped us and we are continuing to take all the measures as prescribed like face masks, Hand sanitisation, our mechanics and other people in the garage are all fully vaccinated and eligible people are getting their booster dose. we also maintain social distancing during customer interaction. During the Covid Demands were suppressed but can see more latent demand coming up. People have now focused on Individual mobility which involves less interaction and hence has helped our business.

You have a total of three garages do you have any plans to expand and what are the plans regarding tier 2 cities?

Our phase one focuses on Tier one and metro cities whereas tier two cities will be in phase two. Our plan is for 10 more cities in 12 months. we do services in tier 2 and tier 3 cities by our spare parts verticle called 'Vmotive'. We supply spare parts in almost 60 tier2 and tier 3 cities. The thought behind this is that everyone should have access to genuine spare parts.

The automotive industry is changing fast as govt is also encouraging EV, but you recently partnered with ASDC to train your employees .how are you going to manage the shift from mechanical to electronics?

It is a very welcome step from all sectors of the Industry whether it is a car manufacturer or component manufacturer. I think it's going to be very interesting and challenging times for all of us and not just Fixcraft. The players like Honda, Hyundai, and Maruti need to start changing the way mechanical repair has happened in the past because of the difference in mobility. We will take help from the players like ASDC to get into the mechanical stuff as our majority of work is body repair and insurance-led repair and they don't need that kind of transmission whether it is petrol, diesel or EV. These things also do not impact things like insurance claims repair. The shift is happening and the industry is evolving Original Equipment Manufacture (OEMs) have to make their training manual public so that information is not restricted to a few hands. We are working on our side by partnering with ASDC. We are working on building our training manual and the entire ecosystem.

You recently acquired 'Vmotive', Do you have any other motive besides that your business runs smoothly?

I think the only logical reason to acquire Vmotive was to start getting into the supply of genuine spare parts. As I said the vision of the company was to make sure genuine spare parts were available to every citizen at the right price point. There are two types of players in the marker OEM-authorised workshop and the other is your local mechanic. At OEM you will get a high price but may get genuine service and with the local guy, you will get a cheap price not assured of quality. A person has to compromise on one part but we try to maintain a balance between them.

What makes you different from your competitors like Geomechanics?

Let me call this out the market is really big, and I am sure there will be multiple players existing at the same time its not a winner-take. However, Every player is trying to do something different so in the case of go mechanics, they have done great work in the last 6-7 years however they are a platform not an end to an end service provider like Fixcraft. Go mechanic as a business model ties up with the existing garages and redirects the demands to those garages now Fixcraft is building its own set of garages because we realise that only when you execute the work well and you do the work yourself or at least have your process, materials or Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) to be very very tight then you can outsource it to the third party think about mc Donalds, They did not get into franchise until they were sure what material is being used like potatoes, buns, heating temperatures etc. At Fixcraft we take full responsibility for an end-to-end service.