Carl (car selection service)

Carl is a car selection service. Users can order a car for a test drive without visiting dealerships. The application is executed in a mobile application, the company brings the car at the specified time and place. The main conditions for users of the service - the driver must be over 23 years old and have more than three years of experience.

According to the project's website, the service offers to take a test drive in a convenient place and helps decide on the purchase of a car "without imposed opinions of sellers," active sales, "waiting for a free schedule and car availability in a dealership somewhere far from home." It is alleged that the companies do not work sales managers from dealerships.

Performance indicators

2020

According  to  the Kontur.Focus database, Carl's revenue in 2020 amounted to 970 thousand rubles, a net loss of 43.3 million rubles. Carl receives revenue from commissions for cars and test drives sold from automakers and dealers, earns from the execution of insurance policies.

In 2020, with the help of the application, dealers sold more than 50 cars worth from 1.5 million to 10 million rubles. Among the most popular are Geely, Peugeot, Fiat and others.

History

2022: Service shutdown

At the end of May 2022, the Russian online car shopping service Carl stopped work. According to the founder of the startup Vitaly Malykhin, the situation in the automotive market is incomprehensible and "hardly adapts quickly."

For obvious reasons, Carl paused until better times. The launch in another market and the search for investments with a Russian passport is now a quest, and taking in Russia now does not make sense. Our product is excellent, so sooner or later, with new forces, we will definitely finish what we wanted, "he wrote on his Facebook page (owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist in Russia and banned).

Russian online car shopping service Carl stopped work

Malykhin added that "he is ready to return to everyone who called for new projects, high-level hiring."

Through the Carl application, you could select a car in more than 40 parameters and conduct a test drive before buying it. An affordable car was delivered to a convenient place within the Moscow Ring Road. The test drive for most models was free, lasting one hour. After the trip, the user received a list of proposals for a specific model.

According to the Autonews portal, which was published at the end of May 2022, prices for new cars in Russia turned out to be the highest in the world, despite the strengthening of the ruble against world currencies. The fact is that sellers are in no hurry to revise prices in the direction of their decline. The increase in the cost of vehicles was influenced by logistical problems and sanctions that Western countries imposed in response to the Russian special operation in Ukraine.

Another reason that could affect the work of Carl is the weakening of demand for online car purchases. According to a Romira study, by the end of May 2022, 76% of people who want to buy a new car, as well as 83% of buyers of cars with mileage, prefer to decide on this "near the hood." I mean, at the dealership.^[1]

2021: Attracting $1 million of investments

On July 12, 2021, it became known about attracting $1 million in investments by Carl's online car buying service. The Avenir Fund (acted as a leading investor), the director of new Yandex products Dmitry Stepanov, the co-founder of the platform for joint work RealtimeBoard Oleg Shadrin and investors Anton Volkov and Alexander Karpovich invested in this start.

They write about investing in Carl Sheets"" with reference to the message of Avenir and the founder of the startup Vitaly Malykhin, which by June 16, 2021 owned more than 75% of the project. The share of the Avenir fund is more than 24%, according to the data of the system. " SPARK-Interfax Earlier, Avenir had already invested about $1 million in this startup.

Russian car selection service Carl attracted $1 million

The investment is in the form of a convertible loan. The funds received from investors "will smoothly include the monetization stage of the business model," a Carl representative told the publication.

 CARL noted that the service is synchronized with the warehouses of dealers and importers, and the car is paid through its payment system, which minimizes the cost of acquiring. At the same time, the client concludes a contract for the sale of the car with the car dealer.^[2]

Carl notes that the number of people ready to buy a car online is growing in Russia - This audience is used to using the most advanced services and wants to minimize communication with outsiders.

The commercial director of Volvo Car Russia Alexei Tarasov calls the promising service of remote ordering a test drive through a mobile application, noting that his company is interested in it. It is always more convenient for the automaker to test the finished solution that is on the market, he explained.

Ecosystems like the one that Sber is developing are trying to close the user to themselves by excluding car dealers from the sales chain and turning them into car delivery points. In such a situation, Carl can only count on its flexibility, technicality and speed, said Grigory Dudash, CEO and co-founder of The Mashina startup (car subscription).

2020

Selling cars via the Internet

At the end of April 2020, the Carl service began selling cars. On the site, you can order cars for a test drive, check out documents for purchase, full payment for the purchase or make a prepayment.

By the end of April 2020, Carl collaborates  with 29  dealerships , which feature cars of brands, Mercedes-Benz,, Land Rover,, Jaguar,, Lexus, and Volkswagen Peugeot Nissan Citroen Subaru others. Tesla  

Carl car selection service with investments of Yandex top managers began to sell cars

In addition, the project agreed to  equip  with the payment service CloudPayments, whose commission for  acquiring for online payments is about  1% against 3-4% for regular online payments. According to Vedomosti, Carl agreed on acquiring with the payment service CloudPayments, whose commission is about 1%. There are agreements with Carl, the representative of CloudPayments confirmed, he did not comment on the terms of cooperation.

According to the publication, before car sales via the Internet in Russia were practically not conducted. Dealers allowed online only to make an advance payment and book a car.^[3]

For the automotive market, online sales are a new growth point, said co-founder and CEO of the CloudPayments Dmitry Spiridonov. According to him, during the coronavirus pandemic COVID-19, the market is changing, many companies are moving online, he said.

By the end of April 2020, some dealers continue to work with all the necessary standards in a pandemic, but the current situation increases interest in online services, said Natalya Rudenko, representative of Subaru Motor. Interest in buying cars online during the period of self-isolation has grown, agrees the representative of Nissan in Russia Roman Skolsky.

Attempts by various companies to organize online car sales ended in nothing, says Oleg Moseev, president of the Russian Automobile Dealers Association.

Attracting investments from top managers of Yandex

In early April 2020, Carl became aware of attracting investments. Dmitry Stepanov, director of new Yandex products, and Maxim Firsov, ex-head of the Yandex.Eda service, who also founded the Foodfox project, invested in it.

It became known about attracting investments by Carl

The founder of the service Vitaly Malykhin spoke about receiving funding on his page on the social network Facebook. According to him, amid the massive demand for online services in connection with several days, consumption patterns have changed in the world, and this has become a "giant growth point" for Carl.

Last week, even before the complete closure, traffic to dealerships fell sharply and we received several requests for connecting online sales and full payment of the car through Carl from representative offices of the most eminent auto brands and large dealership networks. Now the test drive at home, a new format for buying a car online, with full payment by card and delivery of the purchased car to the house, cannot be postponed to the box "of non-priority projects," Malykhin said on April 3, 2020.[4]

Notes