[blackwasp]

Amidst the worst slowdown ever when hundreds of dealerships are closing down, 37-year-old Urvish Shah chose to quit his stable job and venture into the dealership business. According to the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA), over 280 dealerships have been closed in the last few months across India.

Shah used the downturn to his advantage and fulfilled his long time wish to become a dealer, as he could acquire a dealership at best cost. He bought a Tata Motors’ Riya Autolink, which was set up six months before he took it over in April 2019. The erstwhile owner was his acquaintance who was shifting to the US and was winding up the business here.

“If the industry is at its peak, no one would sell his dealership. I believe that to enter into the automobile industry during down time is a golden opportunity that I was getting to put my foot into the business,” Shah told ETAuto.

The dealership was in Ahmedabad’s Bopal area. In the last four months, he has already expanded his business into three outlets and expects to add another one in September. Shah took some loans and used his savings to fund the expansion.

With about 70 employees, the dealership is currently trying to focus on PSUs and government department apart from other initiatives.

He also stated that one of the perks of owning a dealership in Gujarat is the youth customer base. The state does not have a prominent presence of ride sharing platforms like Ola, Uber which makes owning a car the most viable option to commute.

Further, with a monthly turnover of Rs 6.5 crores and sales upto 65 cars during the slowdown, up from 30-40 units of average sales by the earlier owner, Shah claims Riya Autolink to be among the top dealers of Tata passenger vehicles in Gujarat. “Once the season is up, sales will be around 100-110 cars,” he added.

“Our main focus is on walk-ins because it constitutes the largest chunk of the sales pie at 25 per cent. If the customer is actually walking into the showroom, there is a high chance that they are a sure shot buyer,” he said.

Source

[Miyata]

Fantastic! I might consider doing the same at some point, but not a dealership, more a service center!

A good service center can do plenty of things in city if it is watchful enough of local needs at the ground level - both from individual service perspective as well as corporate level. No dearth of benefits to be had with great service on offer.

[GTO]

Nice article, thanks for sharing! Love stories about entrepreneurs. If you have money to invest, nothing like picking up bargains during an industry downtime. Car dealerships make for challenging & operationally-intensive businesses, but if the right decisions are made, they do earn good money. Interesting to read his story and how he'd actually started as a sales advisor in a Maruti showroom.

As an aside, will add that if the previous owner set up the dealership just 6 months ago and moved to the USA, a fair chance he just used it to convert black money into white.