WildBlueSkies - Trends and strategies in Digital Media

After SecondShaadi.com, Vivek Pahwa seems to have turned his attention to automobiles, currently a rather underserved market in the online space in India. The Indian Automobile Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.5 percent amounting to be worth Rs. 13,008 million by 2010, which gives an idea of the potential.

Worldwide, one rather unsubstantiated estimate gives a rough estimate of 9 million cars per year being sold on the Internet, while another puts it at 3 million. Meanwhile eBay reckons that there is a car sold on its website every 60 seconds. I wonder how many of these are B2B transactions, and how many are B2C.

I would tend to think that the market for cars being sold online, would still be more of a B2B market, with most consumers turning to the Internet more for research than for transactions - no wonder, automobile manufacturers use the Internet to promote test drives rather than transactions - not too many would have an adequate credit limit. I wonder if a parallel can be drawn between the online automobile market, and the online property market.

In such a scenario, content becomes very important, and so does community - and in that aspect, Gaadi.com’s emphasis on user generated content seems to have hit it right.