Combinations and permutations lead to some interesting startups. MotorBabu – the startup that picks up your vehicle for servicing – is one such example. An automobile-freak with extensive knowledge, a busy city girl who never found time to get her vehicle serviced and an able engineer son who wanted to employ jobless labour class from his village – got together to found MotorBabu.
MotorBabu is an Indore-based vehicle service booking platform aggregating service centres, that picks up your vehicle for the ‘make-over’ and drops it back to your place. Apart from the usual repair jobs, washing and oiling, MotorBabu is also your Johnny-on-the-spot, providing assistance during break-downs.
Avdhesh Singh Solanki grew up watching his father Late Sher Singh Solanki adore his Mahindra 1984 Jeep. He knew his father loved anything on wheels. He found it fascinating how his father would delve deeper into finding even the smallest of dust on his 1974 Royal Enfield and ensured it looked spotless. Little did Avdhesh know that the knowledge of automobiles that he inherited from his father would become the biggest strength of his future startup, MototBabu.
Yet, as it happens with all startups, passion would accompany a major pain point. Avdhesh, who hails from Jabalpur, had some IT projects with Indore-based EngineerBabu, co-founded by Aditi Chaurasia and Mayank Pratap Singh. All the three often shared problems of servicing their vehicles and soon spotted a gap in the industry. What if someone would just pick up their bike or car from the house, get it serviced and give it back to you? MotorBabu was thus conceived and launched.
Motorbabu.com takes your booking by their app as well as on whastapp. Upon booking, the service centre executive picks up the vehicle verifying the papers first, makes job sheet while listening to your repair/service requirements. The customer has the option of choosing between their authorized or recommended service centers. MotorBabu supervisors ensure that each item in the checklist has been fulfilled and then inspects the vehicle before delivering it back to the owner.
But why would people hand over their vehicle keys to total strangers? The founders did a lot of groundwork to attain the trust factor to the extent that Avdhesh washed some of the cars himself, Mayank went garage-to-garage convincing owners and Aditi kept a track of happy customers for word-of-mouth. “As a result, even before the formal launch of MotorBabu, we had more than 50 happy customers who were testifying of MotorBabu before their friends. And the entire credit goes to our staff and friends,” shares Mayank.
MotorBabu founders are poles apart when it comes to interests but are the best of friends when it comes to the problem-solving spirit of startups. Mayank, a BE from IPS Academy Indore, co-founded EngineerBabu alongside his friend a management graduate Aditi. Avdhesh is also an engineer and has another IT solutions firm.
A startup that is “Peoples Startup”
“We decided to test waters for MotorBabu in Bangalore. Our idea was initially validated by YourStory Founder Shraddha Sharma, Commonfloor Co-founder Lalit Mangal, Aprameya Radhakrishna of TaxiForSure, Ayush Bansal of Razorpay, Santosh Panda from Explara among others,” says Avdhesh.
They collected thoughts, ideas of scaling up but had one clear challenge – how to build a strong team for their platform. While MotorBabu also takes the services of existing garages, the startup does need its own team for strong monitoring the quality of servicing. Mayank had an interesting solution for the challenge. “I have a web-development firm and most of my staff have technical/engineering backgrounds. Whenever I would go to my village, everyone asked me to get jobs for the people there. But I couldn’t employ them in my web-design firm. With MotorBabu, I knew this was the time to finally take the plunge and provide jobs to the labour class of my village,” adds Mayank.
The result of this noble desire was that more than 20 people from his and Avdhesh’s village have come to live in Indore and they are the people who wash, repair, clean and supervise car servicing. “We have given them a decent joint accommodation. These workers firstly trained and then employed at the various service centres, are paid a monthly salary and are able to save enough to send home. But most importantly, they are family,” shares Aditi.
MotorBabu is a genuine endeavor to solve a major problem of convenient vehicle servicing. The three founders launched it officially during Mega Launchpad event held in Indore recently. While currently they are busy in trying to scale up and developing mobile application, they are more than grateful to a huge team of supportive staff. Team MotorBabu is a happy team that wishes to spread happiness among customers too.
Website: http://motorbabu.com/
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