In 2-3 years, our AdEx won’t be over 2% of our budget: Spinny CEO

Keep scaling the business, keep increasing the market share, and keep improving the financial health of the company, is the mantra for Spinny Cars Founder and CEO Niraj Singh. Founded in 2015, Spinny began its journey in Delhi-NCR and has now expanded to most regions of the country. Their latest venture has been an experiential car park in Bangalore, their largest market.

Singh spoke to exchange4media about the potential of used car retailers in India, the company’s ad spending strategy for the next few years and much more.

Talking about the initial challenges, he says: “When we entered the market, it was very crowded. There were already lots of players. So, it was really difficult to convince people that there is still room for a new entrant. Not coming from an automotive background, it was difficult to prove that we will be able to make a dent or we will be able to solve the way we dreamt of solving right. We were told on multiple fronts about the kind of business model we were proposing, whether it at all made sense, and whether was it a quality-controlled experience or not. The scalability of the business model and our ability to execute the business model were also questioned.

However, despite proving ourselves, questions remained about the scalability of our business, whether we could overtake the competition, and create a corner for ourselves. With lots of investors already locked with other players, there were doubts if we could raise funding. So, there were lots of question marks. One by one, we had to work on those questions. But now I think we are, I will say in a very, very conducive spot.

Going forward, it will be more about looking internally and doubling down on what has worked for us so far. External dependencies, external risks and external questions are more or less settled now. So going forward, everything is going to be about internal execution.”

Singh went on to talk about Spinny’s marketing strategies. “We would want to encourage our customers to generate organic UGC, and we would want to take some initiatives in that direction. Other than that, I think doing brand marketing and advertising for prime cricketing events is something that really works for us.

Digitally we have been very aggressive and very active already for the last two or three years. So, we ensure that if a customer starts doing any kind of online research, they get to know about us. In a way, we have already been able to achieve that.

Given that our word of mouth is very strong, over the last one and half to two years or so, the ad expenditure was close to 10% of the total budget. The budget, going forward, will keep coming down. So last year, it was 8-9%. This year, it is already down to 4.5%. Two or three years down the line, it won't be more than 2% of our budget.”

Singh also spoke extensively about building customer relationships. “We ensure that the quality of the car is really great, and everything is transparently shared with the customer. And after the delivery of the car, there is a regular engagement with the customer. There are no gaps in terms of post-sales commitment. We're also doing maximum product integration so that there is minimal manual interaction, and the experience does not break at any point. These are basics but we are doing those basics really seriously.”

Talking about India as a market and where it stands among developed countries, Singh opined that the Indian economy is completely decoupled. “India is not in any kind of recession; our economy remains vibrant and thriving. The Indian used car market structure is completely different. There were demand-supply issues because of the pandemic. Interest rates were going high and cars became very costly. The sentiment was low, especially in terms of used cars. The entire narrative is completely against that market and those geographies. Our market structure is very different. In India as a country, there is a lot of pent-up demand for cars. So be the economy, the market structure, or penetration of cars, we have a completely different market altogether.”