CARS24 Plans Foray Into New Car Sales Business In 2024

One of India’s leading used car buying and selling auto tech companies, CARS24, is now gearing up to expand its operations into the new car sales and purchase business. As CARS24 celebrates nine successful years in India, it has announced the transformation of its car app into a "super app" for car owners, offering a vast range of services that car owners need on a regular basis, along with the option to upgrade to a brand-new car through its platform.

CARS24 has been dominating the organised used car market, and in a few months, it will enter the new car sales and purchase business to improve its topline performance by the end of FY 2024-25, said Gajendra Jangid, Co-Founder & Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of CARS24. Reports suggest that the company is also targeting profitability in the next 12–14 months. The new car business, along with over 40 services offered on its platform, will play a major role in improving its realisations.

Having said that, the company still hasn’t confirmed the model of the new car business as it’s a work in progress. It’s yet to be confirmed whether CARS24 will operate through a lead generation and test drive booking model or provide a fully-fledged car booking and selling service.

The company claims to have improved its gross margin in the 2023–24 period by 3.5 percent, inching closer to profitability. It has also launched a first-of-its-kind "Orbit" feature on the app, targeting to keep app users in a "perpetual loop," engaging them through relevant car-related services like real-time car valuation or depreciation analysis for a certain period, buying, selling, and financing of new and used cars, online challan payments, insurance renewal, car service, and car document storage through Digilocker, among others.

The company has also launched other new services like driver-on-demand, car maintenance, eco-friendly car scrapping, RTO assistance, and FasTag recharge, among others. The major differentiating factor between CARS24 and others in the business is that the majority of the services offered on its platform will be in-house rather than third-party sourced.