The Munich-based startup Abracar has established itself with its Platform for car sales from private individuals to private individuals has developed rapidly. Founded in 2016 by Orhan Köroglu and Sebastian Jost as a spin-off of the Allianz Group, the company quickly grew into one of Germany's largest online car brokers. Recently, the Munich-based company also received financing of €11.5 million. We asked founder and CEO Orhan Köroglu how he and his team maintain focus, structure their daily work, and what advice he has for other fast-growing companies. An interview.
Munich Startup: Orhan, when we two years ago As we talked, you'd only been on the market for a few months, but you were already able to achieve good sales. In July 2019, you reported record sales in the first half of the year. How have your sales figures developed? Where do you stand today?
Orhan Köroglu: Since our founding, we have quickly become Germany's largest private-to-private vehicle broker. We couldn't have imagined this success three years ago. With record growth in the first half of the year, we expect to achieve more than 7,500 vehicle sales in 2019. This means that Abracar brokered a total vehicle volume of over €100 million in 2019, ranking it among the top 30 used car dealers in Germany.
Step by step: How Abracar launches new products efficiently
Together with the Munich-based startup Fintecsystems, you launched your own money transfer solution, "Abrapay," and recently added a new app for appraisers. How do you decide when to launch which new products?
When implementing new services, we proceed step by step. First, we look at which processes in the vehicle brokerage process are crucial and still largely manual. In the next step, we analyze how we can automate the process and make it efficient for employees, partners, and customers. At Abrapay, we didn't want to wait until there was a standardized, digital solution on the market for transactions of this size. So, together with Fintecsystems – developed in-house.
Our network and daily interaction with appraisers helped us develop the appraiser app. We've now succeeded in developing an app that convinces even digitally skeptical automotive experts. Incidentally, the intelligent pricing algorithm was one of Abracar's first developments, as data-based pricing and adjustment is one of the decisive factors in the sales process.
Focus, goal orientation and everyday tools
You're working on many developments in parallel. How do you stay focused?
For us, digitalization is a decisive competitive advantage. That's why we define a clear development roadmap together with our Head of Product. Our constant goal is to make car sales as transparent, secure, and easy as possible. Often, developments are interdependent, or we discover during the planning phase that we can combine things.
Speaking of everyday work: Which tools are indispensable for you at work?
We use Dropbox and Slack for quick exchanges. These tools allow me to access all documents and communications regardless of location and participate in important decisions. We use Trello and Github to organize the development team. Essential for the entire team is our internal CRM system, which we developed ourselves, for managing vehicle inventories and prospective customers.
“Pay attention to team building”
Not only are your offerings growing, but so is your headcount. Communication channels, culture, etc. are changing. How are you dealing with this? What advice do you have for other startups experiencing rapid growth?
We now have over 40 employees here in Munich. On average, we've hired one employee per month since our founding. We both had startup experience, but building a good team is still demanding and takes time. Given Abracar's digital and service-oriented focus, the right employees are crucial to success. We therefore strongly recommend that every founder pay the necessary attention to team building.
And where do you see yourself in five years?
We want to firmly establish professional brokerage on the market at the best price and with minimal effort for the seller. Anyone who thinks of easy car sales at the best price in five years will think of Abracar.
Thank you, Orhan, for the update and the insights.
