RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “Where should I take my car? Is the repair shop reliable? What’s wrong with the car? How much will the repair cost?” These are some questions that many Brazilians who own a car have asked themselves when some problem arises, or it is time for an overhaul. It is a substantial market: Brazil has a fleet of 67 million passenger vehicles (including pickups), according to data from the National Transportation Agency (Denatran).
It is an addressable market estimated at R$100 (US$20) billion, depending on the variables for the calculations.
Entrepreneur Marcio Kumruian, founder and former CEO of Netshoes, launched his new startup Tunne this week to address these problems and opportunities. It’s an automotive services marketplace founded with more than 200 accredited repair shops in the greater São Paulo area, the country’s largest automotive market, and 200 partner suppliers.
“In the automotive market, car sales are starting to go digital, but that hasn’t reached services yet. Tunne comes to fill that gap,” Marcio Kumruian told exame invest. “We want to uncomplicate this ecosystem that involves garages, dealers, the industry, and, of course, the consumer.”
“We will offer information in real-time and with transparency, based on the car and the customer’s address, about which are the best service providers, thinking about quality, trust, and price,” the entrepreneur said.
With this information, the car owner will select the repair shop and make the appointment for the vehicle visit and payment online, as is already done with many other services that migrated to the digital world some time ago. In some cases, there is the option of collecting the vehicle from the customer’s home.
In the first phase of operation, aesthetic car services are also offered, such as cleaning, polishing, and washing, and the installation of accessories such as dark film for windows, alarm systems, and parking sensors.
The workshops agreed to make available online beforehand the information that in the physical world is treated as a kind of “black box” in the automotive sector: Price and time of execution of services such as oil and engine filter changes, alignment and balancing of wheels and tires, among others.
In return, they manage to digitize their services and gain access to a potential market of owners of around 10 million vehicles in the greater São Paulo area alone. Tunne also manages the invoices for the services provided and forwards them to the garages.
The new startup is beginning to serve a market estimated at 410,000 garages in Brazil, of which about 350,000 are independent, and the rest are authorized and accredited, studies by Tunne show. The main target on the supply side is independent repair shops, but authorized and accredited shops are also accepted.
All accredited repair shops are visited by a team specializing in inspection and some onboarding for employees, according to Kumruian, to reduce the risk of problems in the execution of services. In the current base, they are mostly workshops that have some level of authorization from the industry.
Source: exame