Dubai-based SellAnyCar.com is set to invest $122 million in the region to expand its consumer sector, with the launch of Carnab.com.
And founder Saygin Yalcin told Arabian Business the continued success of the online car buying and selling service, which started selling to consumers two years ago, will hammer a further nail in the coffin of traditional automobile retailers.
The 37-year-old serial entrepreneur said: “We’re going to invest $122m into the region for expanding into the consumer sector even more. This was the missing piece of the puzzle where we said we can buy cars, and we can sell cars to dealers, but now we are actually selling cars to consumers giving exactly these wholesale prices, which dealers were buying for, we’re giving this now to consumers.”
Founded in 2013, SellAnyCar.com currently boasts 81 branches in 29 cities across the region, with almost 100,000 cars delivered to date.
Last year the company expanded its operations into Saudi, with the launch of Kayishha, following a $35m investment from Sanabil Investments, a unit of the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund.
Yalcin revealed 51 branches have opened in the kingdom over the past 12 months, with $50m in sales run-rate generated by the company in the kingdom in its first year in operation. Meanwhile, it has also employed some 400 Saudi nationals.
“Today we are the number one car buyer in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Yalcin, a German of Turkish origin, landed in Dubai 12 years ago and blazed a trail in the e-commerce fashion industry with Sukar.com, before it was sold to Souq.com two years later, where he became president of the group.
And in a similar way to which he helped revolutionise the fashion sector, he admitted he’s looking to do the same in the $30 billion automobile industry.
He explained: “I think when people are planning to buy cars, they should have the same peace of mind as when they are buying goods on Amazon. And I would even go further and say there should be the grocery shopping experience. I want people to be able to switch cars whenever they want, upgrade, downgrade, or even track real-time while the car is coming to their premises.
“This experience is obviously now being pushed globally. In the past two years you can see that there has been a lot of investment internationally in this business model, because it’s one of the two areas pretty much online, which has really lagged. One is automotive, and the other one is real estate.
“People couldn’t get that grocery shopping, that Amazon, experience, when you actually bought cars or houses and it’s a large investment. What we need to do is now to actually replicate this experience for the consumers.
“We’ve been market leader in this country for eight or nine years. People notice we’re here to stay. We are now a proven concept in terms of delivering cars, in terms of title transferring cars, refurbishing cars, we have the muscles.”
Yalcin, who has also evolved into an influencer in the social media sphere, said that, at the moment, only one percent of cars are being transacted online for consumers, although he believed this will increase some 50-fold.
And that spells bad news for traditional car sellers. He said: “We’re going through a revolutionary time when it comes to the automotive industry. So all these glass palaces on Sheikh Zayed Road, they will have a tough time competing against an online front.”
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