Pakistan’s first on-demand car maintenance service, AutoGenie, has raised 100,000 dollars as an investment from PakWheels, Pakistan’s number 1 automobile website.
AutoGenie is an on-demand car maintenance service founded in October 2014 by 4 friends from Lahore. The website offers oil change, engine tuning, detailed checkup, token tax, challan assistance and other value-added services. These services can be booked along with the time and date of appointment on just a few clicks of a button.
Whereas, PakWheels is an automobile platform of Pakistan which has online and on ground presence for over the past 10 years. The platform is getting over 20 million page views a month with over 250,000 registered users.
While talking to TechJuice, Mian Hamza, 20-year-old cofounder and CEO of AutoGenie said,
“There is a synergy between both of the brands. PakWheels has the audience which we are trying to tap into and AutoGenie has already entered the market with the services PakWheels would have liked to introduce in future.”
He went on to say,
“Investment is just a small part of this development, we are more excited about the growth opportunities, resources, and access to the network which this partnership entails.”
Moving forward, the startup is planning to open offices in Karachi and Islamabad as well. AutoGenie already has serviced over 1500 cars in Lahore and has hundreds of recurring clients. Hamza believes this investment is a further validation of AutoGenie’s business model. According to the partnership, PakWheels will not only endorse the brand through their platform but will also give a special place to AutoGenie in their applications available for different mobile platforms.
Raza Saeed, CEO of PakWheels told TechJuice,
“We are very excited to partner with AutoGenie.pk. They are pioneer in the on-demand service industry in Pakistan and given their focus on auto related services, it’s a natural fit with PakWheels. Together, we will make buying, selling and maintaining car even simpler and hassle-free.”
AutoGenie is working on new version of web product and marketing strategy to reach new customers through collaboration with different brands. The international automotive industry is going very strong with an average valuation of startups to be 4.2 Million Dollars. If we look around in our neighbouring country India, Cartisan and MeriCar are two of the many ventures working on somewhat similar model.
In Pakistan, PakWheels is considered the leader of automobile industry though Rocket Internet’s Carmudi, OLX, NaiCar and many such ventures exist. This is PakWheels first investment after raising 3.5 Million Dollars from a Malaysian Investment Group, Frontier Digital Ventures.
Here is a brief overview of AutoGenie’s journey so far.
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