A new trend has emerged in the Russian car industry, which is ‘uberization’ of the auto part market. Twenty thousand cars get repaired daily in Moscow alone. According to the Autostat agency, 64% of car service customers believe that car mechanics cheat. In an interview with Invest Foresight, Remontista car repair Technical Director Anton Volodin spoke about creating a marketplace for car services. He also revealed what problems his startup faces in the car industry and commented on the future of the Russian car businesses.
– Last year, you project attracted $1 mio in investment to develop the service in the regions. To which cities did you expand?
– Currently, our service operates in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod. We also plan to expand to other regions.
– How many car services are connected to Remontista?
– We have worked with 3,000 car maintenance shops. Around 600 shops are linked up to Remontista on a permanent basis. In fact, there are not so many good car services in Russia. Only one in ten is worth cooperating with.
– So, you don’t cooperate with all car shops. What are you selection criteria?
– We cooperate with official car dealerships and specialized car maintenance shops which are not inferior to official shops.
– I hear that you use Artificial Intelligence algorithms. Can you tell me more about it?
– Yes, we use Artificial Intelligence. It calculates the probability of customers requesting service at a specific car shop.
– Remontista is not the only project in Russia that created a marketplace for car repair services. What makes you stand out among your competitors?
– Remontista manages deals from request to completion. We have the most customer-oriented service. However, we do not try to influence the car shops’ pricing policies.
– Do you have many customers?
– Over two years, we organized 52,000 deals.
By Alexander Stolyarov