As of April 2021, Carsome reported 8,000 used car sales per month with transaction volumes over US$700 million.
Previously, there was no centralised or systemised platform within the used car market; instead, the market was fragmented and marred by distrust towards used car dealers due to the lack of transparency. “The change in sentiments is accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic; before last year, it took more than 10 years for the retail digital penetration rate in Southeast Asia to get to 3%, and it took less than one year for that to rise to 6%,” said Palkar.
Palkar added that digitalisation offers new opportunities to boost agility, reliability and efficiency, providing more control and greater end-to-end visibility across the used car industry.