ROTIMI
IGE had a conversation with Christian Keller, founder of Carmudi
Nigeria, an online car marketplace, Below is the excerpt of the
interaction.Would you like to tell us what establishment is all about?
Carmudi Nigeria is an online car market place. Carmudi allows you to find the vehicle of your dreams. Our aim is to strengthen the position of consumers by providing information on the car market, then put in contact with individuals and professional sellers.
We strive to ensure that every ad should provide the accurate information on each vehicle to make your choice easy. With the easy to use Carmudi web and mobile site and the Carmudi mobile app on Android and iOS, buying or selling cars just got easier and faster.
We are an online market place. Our role is to help you find the right car and make the link with the owner. We bring our unrivaled experience in the launch of hundreds of companies around the world. With our experience and our know-how, as well as a clear understanding of the specificities of the Nigerian car market, we offer the best online market place for vehicles in Nigeria.
We are also the only market place that provides zero-fraud and trusted sellers with full transparency creating a premium experience. If you are about to buy a car, Carmudi allows you to find the vehicle of your dreams – we currently have over 35,000 cars for sale in Nigeria.
If you want to sell your car, you can list it on Carmudi and reach out to a huge audience looking for cars on Carmudi – and sell it faster. If you want to find car insights, news, and maintenance tips, you will also find it on Carmudi.
How feasible is selling automobiles online and how did the idea of selling online come about?
Carmudi Nigeria doesn’t own any of the cars on the website. What we do is offer a platform for car dealers and individuals to sell their cars hence we don’t sell cars but help others sell their cars. We did our research and realized that there is a growing market for online businesses with over 28% internet penetration and 30 million individuals able to use a smart phone out of the total population. We also realized that in terms of buying and selling of cars online, a huge void was just waiting to be filled. We realised that people still move from one dealership to another looking for their dream car. This wastes time and limits the options they have. So we thought of making it easier for people to find their dream cars anywhere around Nigeria from the comfort of their computers and mobile phones.
What is unique about your website?
We have created carmudi with the values quality and trust at the heart of what we do. Quality management is central to what we do. Our zero-fraud policy and trusted sellers sections are just elements of this premium experience.
The website is also very easy to navigate whether you intend to browse for your dream car, buy a car or sell your car. Most importantly we ensure that all cars on the website are genuine and available for sale by taking the pictures and details ourselves. This ensures we have genuine cars on the website. We do all this because we have zero tolerance for fraud.
With the easy to use Carmudi web and mobile site and the Carmudi mobile app on Android and iOS, buying or selling cars just got easier and faster.
As a new entrant into the sector, what start-up challenges have you faced?
Like every startup, we had to understand our market and the people that occupy this market. Also just like most online businesses we had to ensure we educate our target audience on the benefits of listing their cars on the internet. Trust is always an issue when you talk about online businesses so we had to ensure we gain the trust of both the buyers and sellers.
How have you surmounted them?
Most of the challenges we faced at the very beginning disappeared when people started to understand the vision and mission of Carmudi Nigeria and that is to help people find the right car and make the link with the owner. We have also perfected the method of ensuring no fraudulent listings get listed on the Carmudi website with the use of our verifying process. This has allowed us gain the trust we require to operate in the online market space in Nigeria.
What are the requirements for this kind of online business and how do you intend to get ahead of the physical sale competitors?
It’s simple. We care about the people listing their cars on our website and the people who intend to buy cars. Barely a year old, Carmudi has brought in one innovation after the other to ensure we offer the best service to all users of the Carmudi Website. We have a platform that is compactable with web and mobile devices and also a smartphone app that allows car hunters find their car on the go. We are constantly inventing new ways to improve our services. We are also expanding to various parts of Nigeria with our presence now in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Abuja and very soon we will be expanding to the east as well.
You are participating in the trade fair in Ibadan. What prompted this move being an online car sales site?
Yes, we intend to take part in the trade fair but it has been rescheduled by the organizers. The new date is yet to be communicated to us. We will be holding a dealers forum in Ibadan on the 21st of October 2014. We have quite a number of dealers already on our platform so we want to use this forum to listen to the challenges they may be having and educate them on how to maximize the use of the Carmudi website.
How would you convince prospective car buyers about the authenticity of your products?
Having a trustworthy website is at the core of the Carmudi promise. We ensure we have direct contact with almost all sellers. We take the pictures of nearly all the listed cars and the details so we can offer the visitors to the website accurate information. Also, we do background checks on people uploading to the site. We also list the dealer’s name, location, phone number and email address.
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