This Gurugram-based Startup is Building India’s Largest Consumer Brand in the Auto Sector

Repairing a car is more than just fixing the technical issues – it is an art, to make sure that beautiful piece of metal gets the love and attention it needs. Fixcraft.in has a team of ecelectics, experts and enthusiasts who hate to see that so many cars on the roads have scratches and dents. It was launched on 10th October 2018. They make sure that the after sales services in Auto market are standardized and an excellent quality is available to everyone at Fair price along with convenience and trust. Currently, the market is dominated by OEM authorized workshops at one end and street side garages at the other end. There is a gap for a trusted brand to come in which can bring in more value for money for car lovers.

About the founders
Vivek Sharma is the founder of Fixcraft.in. Vivek has been involved with consumer and internet companies in a career spanning about 12 years. Vivek has worked as AVP, Business Development at Droom.in before starting Fixcraft.in. He is a trained Marine Engineer and has worked across the globe in core shipping. This is probably he gets his passion for machineries from. Vivek is an IIM Bangalore graduate and has been associated with companies like Philips and Snapdeal apart from Droom. We are publishing an interview with Mr. Vivek Sharma, Founder and CEO of Fixcraft.in:

Q.: Can you share with us any insights that led you to believe that this is a big enough problem?
Ans: India is on the way to become World’s 3rd largest Auto Market. Fueled by the demographic dividend, the growth in very significant. Hence the related industries , like Auto After Sales services are also growing rapidly. The current market is about 10Bn USD and is growing at 15% CAGR. Hence it’s expected to be about 20Bn in the next 5 years which in itself is huge market potential. The fact that After Sales market gets fueled by both new as well as used car segments, the slowdown in Auto industry doesn’t have direct deep impact on this.

Q.: Tell us about the Product / Solution. Explain how you went about the Product-Market Fit Process.
Ans: Fixcraft.in is a full stack cloud garage setup which intends to provide best in class car repair along with convenience to all car owners. The current market scenario is such, that the car owner, to get any repair done have to compromise, either in the form of high price in case of OEM authorized workshops, or on the quality of the work in case of street side garages. At Fixcraft, we are bringing best of the two worlds together, hence, Excellent Quality @ Fair price.

Q.: What is your USP?
Ans: Fixcraft is first full stack cloud based garage set up in India. Which essentially means that we are harnessing the power of technology at multiple fronts, be it in terms of assessment of cost of repair, improving workflow inside workshop, real time work updates to the car owner and implementing the industry best practices. All of the above and at the same time, bringing down the cost to the end user by cutting down on frills.

Q.: What were your assumptions when you entered the market, learning that you have?
Ans: Our core assumption was that every car owner loves their car very much and its very close to the heart. Hence, any substandard work on the car hurts badly. They may still choose to get it done due to the lack of good options, however, they are on the constant lookout for some service provider, who can take care of their cars.

Every car owner who cares about the car is a potential customer to us and we are serving them everyday.

Q.: What has been your biggest failure as an entrepreneur and what did you learn from it??
Ans: It’s a challenge more than the failure to get a great team together in place to execute the customer focus vision you want to carry out. We also have been struggling there a bit. However, we have been lucky to get the core team in place, we will continue to expand the team and rope in folks who share our vision.

Q.: How are you pricing the Product? Explain your thought process.
Ans: We are operating on Cost Plus model of pricing. We believe that any startup must keep in mind that to ensure a good quality work output, one eye should always be on sustainability. At the same time, we want to ensure that we stay very price competitive for the quality of work which is provided by us so that we are seen as a service provided who charges a fair price.

Q.: How did you get your first customer?
Ans: Our first customer was through my own reference and a collegue who was driving a scratched car for more than 6 months due to lack of options.

Q.: Please tell us about the investors (if any)
Ans: Along with others, there are a few below:

• RanjanKant: A serial entrepreneur and a veteran in consulting/data and internet space
• Rahul Taneja: Industry veteran and have been associated with multiple companies in leadership roles
• Advisory: Rishab Malik – He has worked with Droom.in and also been with GSF India

Q.: Is there any interesting success story? If yes, please write about it. ?
Ans: We got a call from a Doctor who had very recently moved to Delhi from Germany and unfortunately bumped her brand new car. She wasn’t sure how to go about it as it was small to get done in insurance and didn’t know where to send the car otherwise. To make the situation worse, she saw a movie on Netflix, “Chopsticks” where a car gets stolen. After multiple discussions with us, we finally convinced her to work on her car. We kept her posted on every step. Finally, the car is fixed and today she is one of our most delighted customers.

Q.: What is the big picture of your startup? Is this Product/service leading to something bigger? If so, how?
Ans: Auto Sector is at the brink of disruption by the sheer nature of how this business has been conducted in the past. It’s highly fragmented and is marred with very high degree of mistrust.

At Fixcraft, we believe that this space will see a true e-Commerce experience in terms of convenience and trust. Getting your car repaired will be as easy as ordering Pizza with similar upfront pricing and convenience attached to it along with real time tracking of your vehicle and job progress.

Q.: What is the insight that you have about this market, which no one else has? Uniqueness about your Startup.
Ans: Frankly, our obsession with quality work and customer satisfaction is something which drives us. It may not be unique on paper, but given that this has been the pain point of the industry, we would like to keep that as our anchor.

Q.: Who do You Perceive as Your Competition? How do you differentiate yourself with them?
Ans: Our competition is the existing set of OEM authorized workshops in a manner of speech, however, we intend to more collaborate than compete. We would like to bring in more synergies with them by bringing economies of scale and in the end, bring value to end user.

Q.: What would be your goal to accomplish in the next six months?
Ans: Next six months are very crucial for the company as we enter hyper-growth phase. We would be expanding to regions beyond Delhi NCR and would be expanding our team to ensure that we run a very tight ship on operations and technology.

Q.: What message do you want to convey to fellow entrepreneurs?
Ans: “Lets dare to think crazy, and it will happen.

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Thanks Vivek. Best wishes!