Automobiles portal Droom eyes Southeast Asian market, sets up shop in Thailand

Online marketplace for new and used vehicles Droom announced that it has launched operations in Thailand, it said in a statement.

The company stated that the launch was part of a larger expansion strategy of entering into seven Southeast Asian markets. The Thailand launch marked its third entry.

Droom had earlier established its presence in Malaysia and Singapore in October and December last year, respectively.

Droom attributed a rapidly evolving lifestyle, a large working middle class, changing consumer needs and aspirations, competitiveness, and online and mobile adoption as the reasons behind its entry into Thailand.

“We are beyond ecstatic about beginning our operations in Thailand not only because it is one of the largest and fastest-emerging markets but also because it has unlocked several new possibilities for Droom, like helping the organisation develop its abilities to launch the platform in several languages other than English,” Sandeep Aggarwal, founder and chief executive of Droom stated.

In an interaction with TechCircle last year, Aggarwal said that the company also planned to expand to Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and the Philippines.

The company, which commenced its operations in India in 2014, stated that it has recently crossed 48 million in monthly traffic, with close to 12% of this coming from international markets such as Malaysia and Singapore alone.

Droom’s international foray comes close on the heels of a $30-million (Rs 220 crore then) Series E round it raised in October last year.

In India, Droom aims to expand its operations to 100 cities across the country. The company had recently claimed it has 75% share of the online automobile market in India, generating close to $750 million in gross revenue and $20 million in net revenue.

It claims to have a presence in more than 735 cities and towns across India and to have more than 275,000 auto dealers on its network.

The Gurugram-based company also aims to double its gross merchandise value to $3.5 billion by 2019. The company plans to list on the stock exchanges by 2020.

Founded in 2014, Droom adopts a customer-to-customer approach but offers services that are close to taking full ownership. It conducts extensive verification to help buyers work with offline dealers as part of efforts to ensure standardisation, apart from providing services such as a fair value calculator, roadside assistance and auto loans.

Droom’s main source of revenue is the service fee it charges for every successful transaction. Besides, it has other revenue streams such as creating an ecosystem around used automobiles, including OBV (its pricing engine), Eco (its vehicle inspection offering), history (vehicle history records), discovery (pre-buying tools) and credit (marketplace for used vehicles’ loans).

In the online used automobiles segment, Droom competes with Truebil, Zoomo, CarDekho, Carwale and CarTrade. Online classifieds platforms OLX and Quikr, too, operate in the segment.