Rider to driver: How OLX Autos Helps Car Dealers Shape the Future of Trade?
As Jasjit and the team accelerate OLX Autos towards the future, he knows they must keep in mind one crucial element: the human experience.
“We’ve been focusing on identifying key problems and building a platform where we can address these pain points,” says Jasjit, Associate Director of Product, Dealer Experience at OLX Autos.
“But one day, I chatted with a potential car buyer. He actually stressed the human angle. He wanted to go to the car dealer and drink tea with him to establish trust. Then it would feel comfortable to test drive the car for one or two days.”
“It’s that human relationship. We have to build virtual teas into the app. We must elevate the dealer experience to make it more holistic,” adds Jasjit.As Jasjit explains, a human touch — even in a virtual world — matters. After all, the OLX trading platforms are people trading with other people.
“We want the app to feel like you’re doing business over a cup of tea.”
Recently, we sat down with Jasjit to talk more about the future of OLX Autos. Specifically, we discuss the role of product managers and engineers in enhancing the dealer experience and improving trade.
Make a one-stop solution for consumer buyers
Can you describe what you do for car buyers?
“We want to become a single-stop solution for the consumer buyer. This way, they can get their car in a standardized way and through a simple checkout process. To do this, we have to understand the key pain points,” states Jasjit.
These are the three pain points Jasjit says consumer buyers face:
- The buyer doesn’t trust the cars. They may worry that people hide information, car problems and that they haven’t seen the car in person.
- The buyer doesn’t trust the seller. They’ve never interacted with them before.
- With new cars, prices are standard. Used cars are harder to value. Buyers don’t know if they’re getting the fair, right price.
“If we meet all these problems, it leads to a better, safer marketplace. This is what we want to achieve,” exclaims Jasjit.
How does the consumer buyer purchase a car on the OLX platform?
“We have to know the two main players in the ecosystem,” describes Jasjit.
“One, there are consumers trying to sell to another consumer. This is C2C. Two, there are consumers who buy from dealers. Dealers also play a pivotal role as they currently help transact around 70% of cars in key markets.
To solve these problems, we have to provide a standardized experience to the consumer buyer. If you don’t trust the car buying process, OLX will negotiate for you. Or, OLX will do all the work for the consumer buyer, including buying the car and refurbishing it. This includes delivery-as-a-service and a money-back guarantee because OLX has better control the ecosystem.”
So, how does OLX operate in the middle of the transaction?
“Dealers play an important role of ensuring that there is enough choice of cars on the platform. We at OLX Autos want to support the dealer ecosystem while making sure that consumer buyer can transact with a peace of mind irrespective of the type of seller — OLX, Franchise, Dealer, Consumer,” details Jasjit.
“We don’t want to make the consumer pay more or the dealer take less. This is a balancing act. In addition, if OLX only buys and sells to consumers, there’s a problem. It’s supply. We’re removing too much inventory from the platform. This is why we must play along with the dealers.”
That brings us to the next takeaway…
Enhance the dealers experiences at scale
What services does OLX offer car dealers?
“We try to provide services to dealers so they can simplify and grow their business. We want to incentive them to provide correct info to instill trust in the platform. This is my area. I take care of the dealer platform,” notes Jasjit.
At OLX Autos, Jasjit’s primary objective is:
- Ensure dealers can procure the right cars.
- Help dealers resell the car on the OLX platform. This consists of making sure the car is inspected, either by OLX or a third-party. Dealers can also do self-inspection and OLX cross-verifies.
“This guarantees the consumer gets benefits as if OLX was participating in the ecosystem,” comments Jasjit.
Can you describe the dealer journey?
“The journey starts from the consumer seller’s intent of selling a car. The seller books an appointment for an inspection to place the car on auctions. Dealers participate in auctions and bid for the cars they want to buy. Once a dealer wins the car, he either pays us for car within X days or pays a fee to park the car until he finds the prospective buyer. In order find a buyer, a dealer markets the car in online and offline channels. OLX Autos is the primary choice in this case. Once the car gets listed, he gets leads from potential car buyers and the negotiations begin. On successful closure of negotiations, the car gets sold and the documents get transfer. Ultimately, their goal is to maximise margin and minimise turn around time, ” describes Jasjit.
What’s the main challenge car dealers face?
“Most of our dealers are long tail. These are small- and medium-sized companies that have a capital problem. They have to invest money to buy a car and then sell at a margin. This limits their scale. We’re working with their ecosystem. We offer credit,” says Jasjit.
“Instead of having them pay us within 30 days of the auction, we extend that to 60-90 days in exchange for a percentage of the margin. Once they buy the car, they have 60-90 days to sell the car.
“Additionally, consumers don’t like transacting with unknown dealers and hence lack of trust also impacts dealer’s business. When we speak to dealers, they do say that many times consumers turned off the call or stopped chatting as soon as they came to know that the seller in this case was a dealer.”
My team’s role is to solve these problems, especially in India, Indonesia, and LatAm. We also provide the auction platform to other markets like Nigeria, Chile, Poland, and Mexico.”
What’s your team doing now?
“My team is busy building the buyer journey and the auction platform. My Team is tirelessly working with coming up with the building blocks that would make a dealer more successful. We continue to improve and enhance the auction platform from where dealer procure cars. In addition to the auction platform, the focus is to reduce the time/effort in post auction process or the purchase process. In the dealer’s business time is indeed money. ”
We now offer one stop solution which we fondly call ‘Dealer Super App’ where the dealer can not only procure cars but also get the car financed, inspected and manage marketing, selling and dealing all from one platform.
On the ‘Sell’ & ‘Operate’ part, we’ve integrated with the OLX Platform to post and inspect the dealer inventory so that the dealer can market his inventory well. To further ease the life, we have integrated with OLX Chat and automated responses for frequently asked questions. It’s the AI questions and answers cloud.”
Is there anything new you’re doing to add value for dealers?
“In India, Indonesia, and LatAm, we’ve begun looking at a franchise model. We’re doing it to enhance the experience and branding of our dealers. It gives us the ability to sell value-added services such as insurance. Our goal is to remove the middleman and get rid of fragmentation to make things better for dealers and their franchise,” assets Jasjit.
As Jasjit says, a one-stop solution is needed in the used car industry. And OLX can provide it. Amit Kumar, CEO of OLX Autos India, elaborated on this when talking with Autocar Professional. He explained:
“With the new tech and product changes, we want to reform the fragmented experience for dealers and consumers of pre-owned cars. With an advanced AI backed mechanism, we aim to eliminate the trust deficit in the industry by providing greater access to verified cars, comprehensive access to financing and after sales options. The new product is designed to offer greater peace of mind to dealers and consumers alike by offering OLX’s global tech prowess and innovative solutions in pre-owned car retail.”
Find your north star
What’s the vision for the future of AI at OLX?
Jasjit sums up three specific use cases:
Price discovery: “ We use AI-powered price evaluation tools to analyze whether car prices are fair. When a consumer comes to sell his car, should that car be bought by OLX or by the dealer? This is based on inspection data. For the consumer seller, it’s what will give you maximum value. It doesn’t matter if it's a dealer or OLX. It’s about providing fair prices to both sellers and buyers. We want fair players in the ecosystem,” remarks Jasjit.
More efficient inspections: “With the inspection, we have to understand what are the downsides of the car. AI can do image analysis and analyze engine sounds. We have to optimize the inspection process and automate that part through artificial intelligence.”
Better dealer-buyer communication: “Can we automate test drive bookings and meetings? Can we automate communication between dealers and consumers? Can we reduce the effort in managing a lead and also understanding which leads are more likely to convert? It’s about building a platform to reduce friction.”
“We’re scaling these AI solutions and we’re bringing it all together on a super app. We have an architecture where we can tweak quickly from the backend and frontend for specific locations.”
Can you speak about the impact of COVID on your team?
“For us, this has accelerated the work on the vision. It’s brought more experiences online, so it’s made it easier. People have more trust with online transactions. We’re trying to make car buying online as simple as Amazon checkout. This is our north star.
Given the right experience and expectations, it’s likely the consumer will convert. For a brief moment, our inspection centers were closed. But we rebounded quickly and people have become more accustomed to handling these transactions online,” says Jasjit.
In his talk with Autocar Professional, CEO Amit Kumar detailed OLX’s impressive numbers over the past year. For instance:
- Demand and supply for used cars have grown by 133% and 120% respectively vs pre-COVID on OLX
- The festive season has also augured well with a 33% increase in demand in Sept-Oct 2020 vs Sept-Oct 2019.
Kumar expects the success to continue. Because as the economy opens up, new car sales will increase, which is positive for used car sales. As he states, “both the industries will benefit from the growth in demand led by tech-enabled solutions.”
Do what’s right for the user
What’s your career path?
“I have a background in Technology and Experience Design. I did my master’s in human-computer interactions at Georgia Tech. That was an eye-opening experience for me as I discovered gaps in how we design experiences with computing devices. From there, I always had an interest in solving problems at scale through technology, UX/Human Computer Interactions and Product. I then went into Blackberry where I built the advertising service from scratch to help developers earn from the platform. I also researched and patented several concepts on how human context could be used help solve problems. Later, I came back to India and Product seemed to fit me best. Fortunately, I was able to work as a Product Manager,” tells Jasjit.
What do you think makes a successful product manager?
“You must work back from the customer. You have to identify and understand the key problems you’re trying to solve. Then you have a key chance to get through the ambiguity to solve the right problems for the customer.”
What makes OLX Group a good place to work?
“Working at OLX has been a satisfying and fulfilling experience for me. Before, my focus was on getting things done. Coming into OLX, I gained more maturity. It’s about doing the right things for the customer. This is what separates a great product manager.
The best part of OLX is that it’s organized chaos. This isn’t a boring structure. We’re like a startup. OLX is in the middle of trade. There’s enough tension in the world to get things done yet there is a structure to uphold it. We’re building the future of trade and it’s beautiful, organized chaos.”
What is the most important thing we should know about the OLX Group?
“OLX Group saves the planet. This is where we build a platform where we enable re-use. People re-use resources and this reduces the carbon footprint. This saves the planet from resources depletion. This is a higher-level purpose that keeps me here. By doing this, there is another purpose. I’m trying to upgrade the lives of people by giving them sustainability options to improve their quality of life.”
Live and Let Go
Jasjit and his team at OLX Autos are laser-focused on moving the platform towards a great future. That’s why they’re sure to keep perspective as they go.
“We have a unique cross hub team setup where the Buy and Finance is managed by teams in Berlin/Stockholm and the Sell, Operate is managed by teams in Gurgaon. The diversity and collaboration across timezones along with the motivation of solving customer pain points across the world has been the core strength for the team in this journey. ”
“If I could tell my childhood self one thing, it would be to live your life. We can get too much into the weeds and lose sight of the vision. We have to keep in mind we have a higher purpose to make this planet a better place to live :),” notes Jasjit.
“So, we have to sit down for tea. I like to go running and I love spending time with my daughter. She’s taught me the value of letting go. Because things can turn around quickly.”
On OLX Autos, Jasjit recognizes the complexity of the platform and how online car trade can be chaotic and have its frustrations. That’s why stepping back and looking at the bigger picture is necessary.
“OLX is providing structure and making that chaos functional and beautiful. We can shape the future of trade with the right technologies and a human touch.”
