Auto industry to be among top 2 industries globally in the next 5 years: Gajendra Jangid

Thought leadership is, put simply, a way to build transparency and credibility with your audience as a resource and expertise in your chosen topic or industry. In a world massively disrupted by the global pandemic, thought leaders are whom the industry is looking up to, to provide some direction in charting out the road ahead. These unprecedented times have required a lot of reworking of strategies, some out-of-the-box thinking and a huge dose of innovation. A well-planned thought leadership campaign can help in heightening brand awareness, boost traffic and generate sales. It also helps in building the brand and strengthening its equity in the market.

The transition to digital in the last few years has brought in more brands online, which have taken the role of a thought leader brand in their respective categories. CARS24 is one such brand that has disrupted the category and is delighting customers with great experience.

Coming as a timely beacon in these challenging times is Adgully4m’s latest endeavour – THOUGHT LEADERSHIP SERIES – which is designed to engage with some of the best leaders from the industry in the business of Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations.

Held on Saturday, October 23, 2021, the fourth edition of the Thought Leadership Series saw Gajendra Jangid, Co-Founder & CMO, CARS24, who has been at the helm of the portal’s phenomenal growth, in a scintillating conversation with host R Sridhar, where he highlighted the strategic direction and marketing skills required to become a thought leader. The warm camaraderie between the two industry leaders was evident throughout the conversation as the back and forth banter between the two kept the audience engaged.

On being asked by Sridhar about the challenges faced with the online concept of CARS24, Jangid replied, “As the auto sector is evolving, India is a country where less than 3% of the population owns a car, as compared to Europe or the US, where car penetration is more than 80%. We at CARS24 feel that this is the industry where we can make a lot of difference in the coming decades. The overall landscape of this industry is looking very promising and in the next five years, this industry is going to be the top 2 industries in the world. E-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart have changed the way of shopping, similarly when it comes to buying a car, why should we use the old method of hunting the cars by going to the neighbourhood stores when it is just a click away? One can search the market price and get the best deal online. Though there are a lot of questions raised out of anxiety in the consumers regarding the quality, security and whether the product will run for a longer period of time after buying it. So, we felt that as a brand, CARS24 can solve such kind of problems of these consumers with the help of technology and e-commerce, this is how we will be able to disrupt the entire industry and that is how we came up with a concept to sell car online just like other things that consumers tend to purchase online without wasting their time.”

Jangid asserted that this isn’t just a fancy idea, but a fundamental concept because it relies on what customers really want and are looking for and more importantly, in terms of used cars, the first thing that is important is the selection of the car. “Being online helped us in making a very large selection, which was economically possible as we didn’t have to open dealerships in each and every city of India. The most important thing is to shift the mindset from being an offline player to an online player,” he remarked.

This is an edited excerpt. For this the complete conversation and more interesting insights, watch here: