Chennai-based automobile aftermarket platform, GoBumpr, has raised around USD 600,000 in Pre-Series A funding led by its existing investors, The Chennai Angels (TCA), Keiretsu Forum, and individual investors. Led by Vinod Kumar Dasari, (MD, Ashok Leyland), the investment round saw participation from Shankar V (Director, Acsys Investments), Ramaraj R (Founding Member, Elevar Advisors), Priyamvada Balaji (Wholetime Director, Lucas Indian Service) from TCA to name a few. Ramesh Mangaleswaran (Senior Partner, McKinsey) and Gopal Mahadevan (CFO, Ashok Leyland) have also invested in the company as part of this round.
Founded in October 2015 by IIM grads Karthik Venkateswaran, Nandha Kumar Ravi, and Sundar Natesan, GoBumpr leverages mobile technology to standardize and automate the near-80% automobile after-sales market, which amounts to around USD 10 billion in annual revenue. GoBumpr, currently active in Bengaluru and Chennai, claims to do more than 7,000 B2C transactions, servicing around INR 3 crore in billing value every month.
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“GoBumpr has scaled the B2C service business across two major metro cities delivering value to both workshops and vehicle owners. Beyond being able to deliver quality business to workshops, GoBumpr’s ability to become an overall technology platform in the automobile aftermarket tapping multiple revenue streams is the key to emerging as a winner in this space. Beyond services, the extension of GoBumpr’s platform to spares, tyres, accessories, and used cars has worked really well for the company, and this overall aftermarket tech platform will be a boon to the industry” Vinod Kumar Dasari said.
GoBumpr provides car and bike servicing needs starting from regular servicing, repair jobs, body works, denting, tinkering, painting to 24 by 7 on-road assistance. The startup also provides door-step car wash, engine oil change, tire and battery replacement services at door step. Currently boasting of over 2.5 lakh customers and more than 2,500 service workshops in their platform, GoBumpr provides real-time tracking of vehicle service status till payment and delivery. The startup also provides automated service reminders to vehicle owners. Currently available in Chennai and Bengaluru, the company has plans to extend to other metro cities as well.
“We have established presence and scaled GoBumpr services in Bengaluru and Chennai in the last 12 months. With our success in these two metros, we are confident of scaling the platform not only to other metros but also to other businesses within the automobile aftermarket. As such, automobile is one of the oldest industries and at GoBumpr, we are keen to digitize the after-market space and be India’s most trusted auto-commerce solution for consumers” said Karthik Venkateswaran.
Commenting on GoBumpr’s AI-powered Smart Service, “We are working on AI-enabled platform leveraging data from OBD and existing service records of the car owner to provide tech enabled smart service assistance to car owners. This would significantly disrupt the way vehicle owners and workshops diagnose repairs and handle service” said Nandha Kumar Ravi, who heads the overall operations for GoBumpr.
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Lately, the automobile aftermarket space has been seeing some fundraising activity. In April, Bengaluru-based Pitstop raked in USD 1.6 million in a pre-Series A round of funding from existing investors led by Singapore-based Goldbell Group and Blume Ventures. This was a month after the company had acquired MotorWhiz.
In another development in April, after acquiring Delhi-based ClickGarage in a stock-and-cash deal, car-servicing startup Carcrew Technology Pvt. Ltd, with backing by the TVS Group, raised USD 2 million in a fresh pre-Series A round led by a private equity firm.
Also Noida-based online auto services startup GarageOnRoad acquired an undisclosed amount in a seed round from Gaurav (Jerry) Gupta, senior vice president at reinsurance multinational Swiss Re in December. Earlier, GoBumpr has raised USD 420,000, in their first round of investment, in January 2017.
