Droom aims to go profitable by Q1 2018, launches used vehicle financing

Online used car marketplace, Droom, which closed FY2017 with Rs 45 crore net revenue, today introduced a new credit feature for users. The new functionality would offer customers to get quick loans on the used vehicles from the pool of over 128,000 listings on the e-marketplace.

The Droom Credit feature aims to swiftly close a customer loan, all through an online paperless process, in a claimed thirty seconds. The company will make customers land on a 'borrowers' page, wherein they would be able to place their loan amount request and also digitally share their details on the website, along with incorporating KYC information through Aadhar. 

At the back end, Droom Credit, which deploys a data science algorithm tool, would run different calculations, fetch CIBIL scores and after checking with multiple financing companies, all registered with the company, would offer a loan possibility result, in a ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘May Be’ verdict, after running for 30 seconds. 

Having initial tie-ups and ongoing talks with around 13 financing companies, which include banks like HDFC and various NBFCs, including Kotak Prime, Tata Capital and Capital First, to name a few, there is competition in place, which brings in flexibility until what extent lenders can go to offer a loan to a customer, in terms of the total amount and interest rate.

With this, Droom Credit, as a service provider aims to facilitate customers to get their loan approved at an affordable rate, which based on individual credentials, could go as low as the prevailing interest rates in the market for new vehicles. 

Following approval of a loan, the total time taken to finally disburse the amount to the customer would be around 48-72 hours, which could stretch to about a week for cases, wherein the evaluation came up with a 'May Be' result. 

Droom, which will initially charge an assessment fee of Rs 299 from the customer, would evaluate the request with multiple financing companies, and once the customer chooses to go with a particular financer, there would be a charge of another Rs 700 as part of the processing fee. 

The company also plans to extend this feature to vehicles which are there in the inventory with dealers associated with Droom but not listed on the portal. Later on, Droom aims to diversify the Droom Credit feature to other areas and collaborations, beyond the automotive space.

The technology startup, which saw a conversion rate of 7 percent of the listings getting sold in FY2017, aims to double its Gross Margin Value to Rs 5,000 crore by December this year, with ambitions of becoming profitable by Q1 2018.