Gadgets
How Droom Came Out of COVID-19’s Hard Impact Even Stronger
The company’s founder has seen controversy as he was charged with insider trading in the US, but charges were dropped in February 2020, just before the worst of the COVID pandemic hit. Unfortunately for the online marketplace, it then saw its business go completely to zero during the early lockdown months last year, but Droom says it recovered really well soon after and their business reached a new peak that was higher than pre-COVID levels in December 2020. Droom currently does $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 11,016 crores) in GMV and claims to be growing at the rate of 100 percent year on year.
Expert opinion: TechArc chief analyst Faisal Kawoosa says, “It makes a lot more sense to sell cars online. Target segment of users who buys cars does a lot of research online and after that, they want a test/ experience drive. Thanks to these new online services, bookings can be done online, and the car can come to your doorstep for a drive. After that, it’s just a commercial transaction. Even as a consumer, I would be more comfortable buying cars online than grocery, clothes, and shoes.”
We spoke to CEO and Founder of Droom, Sandeep Aggarwal to know a bit more about the company’s success story, how it survived the pandemic, and its future plans.
1. What was the initial conceptualization process behind Droom? When did you first start talking about beginning this startup?
I thought about Droom in April 2014. The idea behind Droom was that India is the third-largest automobile market in the world but why not to give 21st-century experience to consumers for automobile buying and selling and how we can overcome India’s structural constraints of the high cost of capital and very expensive real estate and yet provide the largest selection, low price, trust and transparency for automobiles online.
2. When was it that you finally decided you wanted to start Droom?
I was at the lowest point in my life when Droom came into being. I was in USA for a year dealing with my legal case, I knew I would be distancing from ShopClues, and I had no certainty on what I am going to do next if any. That time, I realized that I want to be king of my hill again and how Droom occurred was rested on three things – India is the third largest automobile market in the world, buying and selling an automobile is so 19th-century experience with frictions, and why not use my marketplace knowledge and experience to disrupt this industry.
3. Were there any operational challenges (or any other challenges) that you faced when starting Droom? Please offer our readers details on what those challenges were and how you overcame them.
Building a startup has always been full of challenges. In my case, the biggest challenge was attracting investors and capital for Droom. On one hand, I was one of the five Indians ever to create a unicorn in 2014 but on the other hand, there was high profile legal case against me in USA. So, many investors did not team up due to the legal overhang.
4. Did you have to put in any money to start the business? When did you decide that funding was required? Could you offer broad details on how a startup gets funding in India and how Droom managed its first round?
I spent sizable money for nearly five months before raising first round of capital. Typically, start-ups rely on the founder’s savings, followed by seed money from friends and family, followed by angel investors before getting capital from venture capital firms. In my case, I got two of the investors who had funded me in ShopClues to come in as investors in Droom and shortly after that I had another large pool of angel investors. So, that way, I was very fortunate that I got two rounds of funding in a matter of 5 months.
5. What do you think of the vehicle-consuming audience in India?
Only 4 percent of Indians have cars and 25 percent have two-wheelers. No country has achieved economic progress until it has seen large adoption of automobile ownership. So, India is where US was in 1940 when it comes to automobiles. Next 40 years, Indians will be buying lots of cars and two-wheelers. Currently for every new car 1.65 used cars are sold, and we think Indians will buy 2.5 used cars for every new car by 2025. Another thing, only 0.7 percent of the total automobile market is online and by 2025, 6 percent of total automobile market will shift online.
6. Will you be riding the electric mobility wave in the country? What is the future roadmap for Droom if electric mobility does see some considerable runway and growth?
The adoption of EV in India cannot be as rapid as one would hope. As a country, we have some structural constraints and some on-ground reality that makes EV adoption tough. These are main – the high cost of capital, expensive real estate, traffic rules, and India being low trust market and safekeeping of EV infrastructure. In USA, the first hybrid car was launched two decades back and even today less than 25 percent of the total vehicles are EV in spite of 2-3 wars, massive subsidies, and great infrastructure.
7. Is there any particular incident that is monumental in Droom’s journey? Please share that incident with our readers.
After selling 2,90,000 automobiles worth Rs. 19,500 crores by February 2020, our business came to zero in April 2020 to June 2020 due to COVID-19 led lockdown in India. It was very catastrophic for the entire company. But we utilized those adversities into new opportunities and came out of COVID-19 as a much larger and more profitable company. Our 250 people worked very hard, day and night, to achieve many goals that we were going to achieve any way, but we achieved them with more concentration and higher pace. We fundamentally changed how Droom operates and now give an even more delightful experience to our users. So not only we built better scale and higher profitability, but we also innovated more.
8. Could you help give a sense of how far Droom has come? From when it began to where it is now
Droom was started on April 14, 2014 and we are completing seven years. When we started Droom, most did not believe that people will buy cars and motorcycles online. However, since we started, we have sold 3,32,000 vehicles and 1.35 million services worth $3.3 billion (roughly Rs. 24,232 crores), experienced 1.2 billion traffic life to date, 20,000 auto dealers, 3.5 million listings, presence in 1091 cities, and listed inventory on our platform worth Rs. 1.1 lakh crores (India’s largest selection online).
9. Has there ever been any failure or challenges? Please offer detail about this and how you overcame that.
My life has been a roller coaster ride and has seen more ups and downs in the last decade vs. what people see in their entire lifetime. I came to India to start ShopClues and the month I was convinced that ShopClues will be a billion-dollar company, I was indicted by DOJ and sued by SEC in USA during a family vacation and money-raising trip.
I had to be in USA for 13 months and ran ShopClues from there while dealing with the legal mess. When I came back, I had to step down from ShopClues and had to start all over again and built Droom from scratch. My learning is that never ever let your human spirit die or feel self-pity. Bad days will not last forever and focus on your efforts.
10. What was it like sailing through the COVID-19 crisis? Did you see a fall in business or an unexpected surge? How did you deal with it?
Our business had hit very badly and from April to June, the business was close to zero. However, since July we started seeing steady recovery and by December 2020, we reached a new peak in our business and that was higher than pre-COVID. Now, business is super strong, and this is going to be our bumper year.
11. Any advice for young Indian entrepreneurs out there?
Follow your passion, do not underestimate the need for capital to build world-class companies, take a long-term approach, invest in your people, solve business problems with the use of technology, measure everything and solve problems fundamentally versus throwing money or people at the problem.
12. What are the big plans in the future?
We have been creating India’s most delightful experience in buying and selling automobiles online. Lately, we have been investing in making loans and insurance easier after you buy an automobile at Droom. We are also investing heavily in our last-mile delivery solution for the automobile including test drive or delivery of a car at your doorstep in a flatbed truck. Besides, as COVID-19 will settle down, we will resume our international expansion in South East Asia, Middle East, and Africa. Before COVID-19, we did expand in Thailand and Malaysia and our used vehicle-pricing engine OBV (Orange Book Value) is available in 38 countries.
13. What is the employee strength? Is Droom hiring currently?
We are a technology company that happens to sell automobiles; hence we rely less on a large number of feet on street sales teams or a large number of blue-collar workers. We have currently 300 employees and we will be adding 100 more this year.
Gadgets
Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
Gadgets
BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Gadgets
Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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