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Marketplaces

Episode 

Spinny’s Lessons on Winning Customer Trust in a Crowded Market

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When Niraj Singh started up Spinny, the used-car market in India was already crowded with cash-rich competitors. More and more Indian buyers were leaning towards buying pre-owned cars because of the better value they offered but the landscape was still full of potholes and barriers. There were few trusted intermediaries, and no convenient way for buyers to go through the sea of options or for sellers to find the right price. That is where Spinny came in.

Niraj Singh founded the full-stack platform for buying and selling used cars in 2015, together with friends Ramanshu Mahaur, a fellow alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi, and Mohit Gupta, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Ghaziabad, who moved from Flipkart to join as operations head. A car lover himself, Singh wanted to address the pain points in the sale and purchase of a used car. 

“When you're buying your first car, it's a very important, very aspirational, very emotional purchase for you, and your entire family. It was very clear that we are not going just after the used-car market opportunity, but we are going to solve (an issue) of trust, experience and aspirations of people,” he said in an interview with Pankaj Mishra, co-founder of the digital media publication FactorDaily, a journalist tracking start-ups, with over two-and-a-half decades of professional experience.    

Sellers put in a request to sell their cars on the website. If it passes a 200-point test by an inspection team, Spinny sets a price, features the car on the site, and takes over the responsibility of selling the car. Buyers have the assurance of buying a Spinny-certified vehicle and the added benefit of a 1-year warranty. The company takes care of all the paperwork, from registration to title transfers. 

Among others, Spinny competes with OLX, Quikr and CarDekho in a market that was valued at $23 billion in the financial year 2021-2022 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19.5 per cent until FY 2026-27, according to a report by IndianBlueBook, an auto technology platform, and Das WeltAuto, the pre-owned car business of Volkswagen India.   

After starting operations in the National Capital Region (NCR), centered on Delhi, Spinny has expanded into Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Indore, Coimbatore, Lucknow and Kochi. It became a unicorn with a valuation of about $1.8 billion, when it raised $283 million last year from a consortium led by Abu Dhabi-based ADQ, Tiger Global and Avenir Growth.  

This interview is part of a special series brought to you by the Indian unit of Accel, which has backed some of the most significant marketplaces that have come up in India including food delivery platform Swiggy, e-commerce company Flipkart, TaxiForSure, which offers ride-hailing services, and Urban Company, a provider of  home cleaning, appliance repair, beauty treatment and handymen services to customers at their doorstep. 

Joining Pankaj Mishra in the chat is Niraj Singh, who at the time of founding Spinny, already had two start-ups behind him – TechMonkey, an Internet media company, and Locus Education, an IIT-JEE prep venture with offline and online presence. They dive into the details of going from a marketplace model to a direct full-stack model, the business of trust, and the basic rules of team building.

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We’re looking for the next generation of successful Indian marketplaces. If you’re an early-stage marketplace founder, apply now here or learn more about the #DecodingMarketplaces Startup Hunt.

We’d love to hear about your experiences with marketplaces. Let us share our learnings and build a better and stronger ecosystem. Write to us at seedtoscale@accel.com to be a part of the Accel family.

Jennifer Phan
Co-founder and CEO, Passionfroot

We’re building Passionfroot 1, an operating system for creators to manage their business.

We’re based in Europe and raised our $ 3.4m pre-seed round from Creandum and US angels such as Vlad (Webflow) and creators like Ali Abdaal.As we’re creating a new category and as the creator economy is global and mostly online, we’re building from Day 1 a global company and product that helps creators monetize around the world.

This brings a lot of complexities especially in terms of payments and taxes as our early users are based both in Europe and the US and deal with cross-border transactions.What are Do’s and Dont’s for European startups who have a global ambition and build products for a global customer base from Day 1. Anything you would do differently?

Krish Subramanian
Co-founder, Chargebee

Thanks @pjbouten! Love how you’ve thought about incrementally shaping a category with a focus on product and service, and only then thinking about getting the message out there vs the other way around.

And totally agree on the distinctions and overlaps both self-serve and enterprise motions share.

Community/Editorial, Relay

Thanks, PJ, for taking the time to address questions from the great vantage of shaping Showpad into a global, enterprise SaaS brand!


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