Droom, the ‘Amazon of Indian automobile industry’ and 2nd back to back unicorn created by Sandeep Aggarwal
Droom became a unicorn last year in July is now set for an IPO journey as one of India's first end-to-end transactional platforms.
A brainchild of Sandeep Aggarwal (The only tech entrepreneur in India to have founded two unicorns back-to-back— Shopclues and Droom) is the only automobile e-commerce platform with end-to-end technology, having 300k automobile supply worth $2.5bn from 21k cloud dealers and 10 million individual sellers from 1,151 cities of India which includes tier 1, 2, 3 & 4 market.
Founded in April 2014 with a very long-term vision of bringing disruption in the automobile transitions online in India like fashion, education, and travel. Since the vehicle is a big-ticket item and India is a low trust market, droom developed a few disruptive tools to eliminate all the hassles such as the fair market price of the vehicle, condition, history, loan, and Insurance which come during the transaction of a used vehicle.
It’s not an easy task to sell or buy used automobiles in India as the used automobile market is one of the most fragmented and unorganized in the world with 85% of used cars sold in India are coming from the unorganized markets with small, fragmented, and unbranded dealerships.
Unlike the USA, Western Europe, and Japan, India is a low trust market with a lack of transparency or standardization and Droom’s disruptive business model is a one-stop solution to these problems.
But is Droom really becoming the ‘amazon of the automobile industry’?
Droom’s operating business model is very similar to Amazon’s third-party business with fulfillment by amazon. A dealer or a mom-and-pop store can register and take care of sourcing, refurbishment, and listing of the vehicle whereas droom as a platform takes care of fair vehicle pricing, vehicle condition, vehicle history, loan and insurance, and last-mile delivery.
Multiple players in the industry deal in the used automobile segment than what else makes droom different and innovative. Droom not only deals in used automobiles but also in new automobiles and unlike other industry players are available in all categories starting from mass market to mid to premium and luxury which also results in its average selling price standing at around 10.5 lakh.
The hypergrowth business model, speed to market, and long-term vision of founder Sandeep Aggarwal made droom one of the early unicorns in the automobile e-commerce sector in India (became a unicorn in 1h- 2021) and one of the first end-to-end transactional platforms to go on the IPO journey (the company has filed DRHP in November 2021).
