Droom Launches Orange Book Value – An Algorithmic Pricing Engine For Used Vehicles

Gurgaon-based online automobile marketplace, Droom has launched an OrangeBookValue (OBV) destination website, along with its Android and iOS apps, multiple partnerships and third party web publishers’ widget.

This will allow users to measure the fair market value for any used automobile in less than 10 seconds with the help of basic parameters like make, model, year, trim and kilometers driven.

The company claims OBV to be India’s first and only algorithmic benchmark ‘pricing engine’ for used vehicles.

More About OBV

The US patent-certified OBV pricing engine is built on Droom’s proprietary computational infrastructure and real-time data science. The final price analysis of the used vehicle is based on empirical evidences like purpose (buying/selling), depreciation curves, margins, etc.

It also takes into account intermediaries as the vehicle changes ownership, and dozens of factors that impact the valuation of an automobile.

As  Sandeep Aggarwal, Founder and CEO, Droom said, “We have developed OBV with a long-term vision of making it the most-trusted valuation guide for automobiles — be it a cycle, bike, car or even an aeroplane. Droom is a technology and data science driven company and with an innovative and disruptive marketplace approach, we build trust, pricing, transparency and convenience advantages in a unique way for buyers and sellers for used automobiles. The launch of this website is a step towards this commitment to our users.”

Whereas a seller can refer to OBV pricing while selling an automobile on any platform or channel, a buyer can use it to have another reference point about the fair market value of an automobile, be it at droom or any other platform or channel.

It will cover 24000+ products from 100+ makes, nearly 1000 models and 4000 variants for last 10-11 years, in categories including motorcycles, scooters, bicycles and planes.One can even  download/share the pricing report, which also gives overview of the prices of similar vehicles listed and sold in the last 60 days, 90 days and lifetime.

“We have already managed to generate almost 72 million queries in the last seven months. OBV is also the valuation/pricing partner with Carnation and Renew Buy for auto insurance.,” said Sandeep.

Innovations And Funding At Droom

In March this year, Droom launched an auto inspection app Eco in association with CarNation Auto, aimed at improving the transparency and authenticity of automobile checks. The 150 member Droom team is also working on formulating a car history repository called Droom History, which will be similar to US-based CARFAX.

Last September, it also launched Quicksell – India’s first C2B (Consumer to Business) marketplace.

In June this year, it raised an undisclosed amount in Series B round of funding from Singapore-based BEENEXT, Japan’s Digital Garage and existing investors. Last July, it raised about $16 Mn in a funding round led by Mumbai-based LightBox Ventures and Japanese internet firm Beenos.

Droom had also raised two seed funding rounds before: in May 2014 and October 2014.

Droom was founded in April 2014 by Ex-Shopclues CEO, Sandeep Aggarwal along with Rishab Malik. It is the only marketplace in India which follows all four models of operating, i.e. B2B, B2C, C2C, C2B. At present, it has over 62K B2C sellers, 25K products, 97K listings, INR 4,500 Cr  in listed GMV, 2.36 million facebook community members and 2.97 million downloads for mobile apps.

The automobile market in India is pegged at $125 Bn. However only 3% of it is currently online. The market is expected to reach $250 Bn by 2020 and online penetration is expected to hit 8% by then.

Other players in this segment include OLX, Quikr, Carwale, Cardekho.com, Spinny, and Zoomo.