BENGALURU: Ending up on a flat tyre late at night in an unfamiliar location, is a situation that almost every motorist has faced once at least. Mostly of these stories would involve you pushing the vehicle till the nearest puncture shop.
What if, instead of calling a friend, asking passers by to help or leaving the vehicle unattended by the roadside until the next morning, one could find someone who could easily spot a puncture shop?
BookMyTime, a city-based startup, has done extensive work in mapping puncture shops in the city. Download their app and you will be able to find the nearest shop along with the phone number of the shop owner. At present, BookMyTime has mapped 70 per cent of puncture shops in Bengaluru.
Not just that, even though a lot of us use vehicles regularly, our knowledge of the vehicle itself is limited. In fact, majority of those who drive a car do not even know how to open a bonnet, according to a survey undertaken by BookMyTime.
Team BookMyTime has solutions for this, too. In case of requirement of repair or service, the app will assist the user in selecting the best service shop according to what is required for the vehicle.
All the user has to do is to upload a picture of the vehicle and it will suggest the parts that are required to be repaired.
Book my time team will facilitate the pick up and drop for the vehicles, in co-ordination with the service provider.
Their flagship service though, is the group buying feature for cars. This feature on the app pools people who are looking for similar models of cars and helps them find good deals. “For instance, say five people in the city want to buy one model of a car. If you buy more than one vehicle from a particular dealer, chances are, you will get a better discount.
We also do backend research to find out which dealers have good deals on accessories and overall discounts,” said Muki Reghunathan,the co-founder.
Muki said they got the idea for the startup when he and Raghurama Kote (one of the other co-founders) found someone struggling to fix a flat tyre of their car on a roadside.
All the features in the app have been developed based on personal experiences of the founders. When it comes to vehicle servicing too, Muki has an anecdote to narrate on why they find it important to digitise all the service stations: “Kote has a Skoda, which was scraping the road when he drove in the terrain of his home town near Mangalore.
When he approached the brand’s service station, he was told that it would cost him around `6 lakhs to fix the issue. We later found a service shop near Lalbagh West Gate. The guy was able to repair it within two hours for `4,000 by fitting in a spacer between the shock absorbers. People should be able to access services like these.”
Eyeing for a pan-India presence, the team wants to expand to other cities, beginning with at least two other cities outside Bengaluru over the next six months.
At present, the app has seen 4,000 downloads. The team is able to facilitate 250 car services per month and they have sold over 80 cars in the last five months.
7 Failures and 9/11 Didn’t Stop Him
The story of how the founders came together is as diverse as the services offered on the app. Muki’s story is that of grit and sheer perseverance. A first generation entrepreneur, Muki had seven failed ventures before he launched his successful digital agency Pepper Square. He moved back to India from the US after he lost his job post the 9/11 attacks. He could manage to come back with the tax money that the US government returned to him, after he appraised them of his situation.
Raghavendra Chandrappa, a.k.a Rags as he is fondly known by his team,is the co-founder of Service My Car. He approached Kote and Reghunathan to partner with them for his venture.
Instead, the company got acquired by Book My Time and Chandrappa got on board the team. He has served as the regional head of ALD Co-founder Raghurama Kote has over decades of experience in the IT industry and also runs a foundation called RightToLive.org.
Tony Hadzi is an American citizen and co-founder and CEO of Opteamix LLC.