Carro’s COO on leaving Uber and his outlook on SEA’s ride-sharing space

Vidit Agrawal, COO of Carro

This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with Asia VC Cast hosted by Daniel Song where we publish the revised transcripts from the podcast’s interviews with inspiring entrepreneurs and experienced VCs. This is heavily revised from the show’s original transcript. For the full interview, go here.

Vidit Agrawal is the COO of Carro, a used car marketplace based out of Singapore. He is focused on pushing the company’s growth in its international markets. Prior to Carro, Agrawal was Uber’s first employee in Asia, spearheading vehicle partnerships in the region.

In this interview, he talks about his journey, Grab vs Go-Jek, his outlook on the ride-sharing space, and the critical stages of scaling a startup.

Tell us about your journey from Uber to Carro.

I studied in NUS and went to Silicon Valley on the NUS Overseas College Program. That’s when I spent a year in The Valley and got a taste of entrepreneurship for the first time. After I finished my studies, I worked in banking for a few years, then I thought I needed to go back to startups.

So in 2012, I started applying to various companies. Then, I heard Travis Kalanick’s talk at Startup School and I was super impressed by him. I got in touch, and that’s how I landed at Uber where I worked on the company’s operations in Asia. I spent five years in the company and it was a great journey.

Last year, I realized that it was probably time for me to go and build another company. I really like the mobility space as there’s so much to do across the whole spectrum. And when I spoke to the Carro team, I found that what they’re doing is impressive. That’s how I ended up at Carro.

Tell us about Carro.

Carro is a used car marketplace, but like any other startup, it has experimented and pivoted a few times. The company started in Singapore as a C2C platform where we connected a seller with a buyer and took a small percentage out of the sale. But over time, our users would prefer to employ an agent due to the big ticket size and painful paperwork. We realized that it’s counterintuitive to the marketplace model.

Then, we launched this business called Express where anyone could come to us to sell their car. We would buy the car within two hours, and sellers would get their money right away. But we realized that financing was a problem for a lot of customers. So, we launched a financing business called Genie Finance. We also launched Carro Assist to support customers when their cars break down.

We’ve considered the entire car ownership life cycle, and that’s how we presented the business in Singapore. We’re also present in Thailand and Indonesia, but the approach is slightly different. We’ve built platforms where we let people sell their cars to dealers through a national car auction platform. This way we facilitate the intra- and inter-city movement of used cars across the country and help car dealers grow their business.

Since Uber’s exit from Southeast Asia, how do you think the ride-sharing landscape has evolved in the region?

The acquisition has sent Grab onto a path of profitability. They are probably making money in every market (apart from Indonesia) from rides at the moment. As a result, Go-Jek has responded by announcing their international launch in Vietnam and Thailand and is expected to do the same in Singapore soon.

Another thing is that some small international players have announced their launch in markets like Singapore (e.g. India’s Jugnoo). So, the ride-sharing market is going to be very dynamic in the short term.

How do you see the dynamics between Grab and Go-Jek playing out?

Both Grab and Go-Jek  are quite formidable companies, with some prolific names as their investors. And this is why I don’t see these companies running out of cash anytime soon, but they will continue to raise massive funding rounds in the near future.

In terms of verticals, they are already fighting hard on ride sharing, but fintech is becoming another vertical where there is lot of growth. There’s a big opportunity especially in payments and e-wallets, and both companies are putting a lot of resources into this space.

Do you see any other competitors emerging from the region?

What do you think will happen in the next one or two years?