While owning an automobile is for sure said to be a thing of luxury and comfort meant to make our lives easier and smoother, sometimes these very epitome of luxury and comfort end up making our lives a menace. Imagine being standard on a deserted road at 1'o clock at night while returning from a wedding/ party and having no one to assist you to get your beloved car and you back home. I'm sure such a situation might have occurred with you or your family at some point in life, making you run pillar to post in search of a roadside mechanic at night, who ultimately ends up extorting big from you because of the tricky situation you're stuck in.
A Chennai based startup called GoBumpr is here to help you out of such tricky situations you face because of your vehicles. It is basically a mobile application platform aiming to help vehicle owners find, book and pay for their automobile services from quality Service Stations at the single tap of their mobile screen.
GoBumpr has a mission to become the 'go-to’ pit stop for end-to-end car and bike service needs right from the day a vehicle owner purchases a car and/or a bike. It offers OEM authorized free services, ad-hoc repair jobs, regular scheduled paid services, vehicle insurance renewals, finding nearest petrol bunks on road to 24*7 on-road assistance, etc.
For automobile service centres and local neighbourhood garages/mechanics, the startup aims to provide a great opportunity to offer, promote, market, sell and manage their services an online platform. The startup's partner interface offers real-time automation of service booking and customer engagement processes, which ensures seamless customer experience.
Gobumpr was founded in 2015 by Sundar Natesan and Karthik Venkateswaran, both IIM-Shillong Alumni, along with Sundar Natesan who had leadership responsibilities & worked closely with the CEO & COO at IndiaProperty.Com.
Prior to starting gobumpr!, Karthik has helped incubate couple of niche Chennai based start-ups (one in the pilgrimage tourism space and other in hyperlocal food delivery space) via a niche incubation consulting firm 'www.northerly.in' which he co-founded. Karthik also has 38 months of IT & business corporate consulting experience with Industry pioneers like Deloitte and Cognizant.
The GobBumpr team is mentored and advised by Mr. Raghavendran Sethumadhavan, an automobile veteran with over 25 years’ experience spanning all major OEMs.
How GoBumpr started? – Background
Karthik & NandhaKumar met each other during their PGDM course at Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Shillong. During their MBA days, they found an innate interest towards automobile industry, thanks to the business strategies they had presented to Automobile pioneers like TATAs & Mahindra’s. They participated and won several business corporate events throughout India. After their studies, each of them worked with corporates but always wanted to continue their winning streak in the form of starting a business of their own. After an year, they came together with a niche business consulting firm and acquired clients from US & India. During this time, their ideas presented to Mahindra & TATAs were on top of their mind. Couple of break-down incidents with their vehicles kindled their thought towards developing an app like GoBumpr for vehicle servicing needs. They did their market research for 6 months and came up with the android app GoBumpr launched on Oct 24th 2015.
During the ideation stage, Karthik & Nandha were joined by Sundar Natesan (Karthik’s childhood friend) who has a rich experience in digital marketing & analytics via his experience/exposure in closely working with Mr. Ganesh T Vasudevan (CEO of IndiaProperty.com) & Mr. Muralikrishnan B (former eBay India Head).
Closely guided by Ganesh T Vasudevan, GoBumpr team is also mentored & advised by Mr. Raghavendran Sethumadhavan (Automobile veteran with 25 years’ experience spanning all major OEMs) plus couple of other Auto Industry veterans in Chennai.
The Reason of GoBumpr's Inception
Karthik's car got punctured while returning from office in the night and OEM on-road assistance was not able to help despite charging 700 Rs. He was made to figure out a local mechanic on his own after wasting almost an hour. This is when he though an app like GoBumpr should be there to assist people at times of break-down & tyre puncture.
Nandha Kumar always wanted to compare the costs from various service centres before servicing his 18 year old bike which his father gifted him years back. Even the OEM authorised rates varies from centre to centre, leave alone the comparison with a good multi-brand garage. Just because a dealer outlet owns a real estate space in prime locality, he simple charges more for the same service! From a consumer stand-point, we just want good service at a nearby garage at a transparent & fair price!
The startup is currently boot-strapped. In fact, without spending a single penny on marketing so far, the startup has been successful in garnering more than 700 car and bike owners on its platform with close to 100 transactions worth INR 15 Lacs within 2 months of the app's launch.
The startup's current strategy is to take the Chennai automobile service market by storm and then replicate and better the same model everywhere. So, if you're in Chennai and stuck on a deserted road at 1 in the night, you know whom to contact.
Advertisements