Three Chinese automotive technology companies demoed at the final pitch of the Castrol 20/20 Challenge, an event aiming to find early stage companies with disruptive business models and technologies. Cihon.cn, winner of this competition, received a cash price of $10,000 plus the opportunity to develop their company in partnership with BP/Castrol. TelemSoft won the second prize of “Castrol People’s Choice Winner” in the competition.
Cihon.cn is application service and hardware provider that integrates mobile internet, car networking and cloud computing technologies. The company’s flagship product called Car Easy provides simple diagnosis and car assessment services to ordinary car owners who lack knowledge of car conditions and maintenance. The software analyzes the driving behaviors of customers based on an ECO DRIVE model, correcting the driving habits, improving driving safety and cutting the cost of drivers. The company’s business model is based on service sales and data processing operation. The company has more than 50,000 users, recording an annual profit of 6 million yuan.
TelemSoft provides telematics products and technical solutions for car dealers, telematics service providers, car insurance firms, fleet owners, government environment projects and end users. The company offers a series of products, including smart vehicular terminal T-Box, cloud computing platform, mobile app and web management platform. TelemSoft is expected to generate $80,000 of revenue in 2013.
51Chebao is an e-commerce platform focused squarely on auto maintenance services. The platform, which has developed standard maintenance specifications, will recommend suitable services and service providers to car owners. 51Chebao records more than 500 registered users after its launch this April without any promotion activities. The company has established cooperation relationship with 20 car maintenance shops in Shanghai.
The profit of automotive after-sales service usually triple that of vehicle sales. Chinese market size of automotive after-sales service was estimated to reach around 500 billion yuan ($81.03 billion) in 2012 (source in Chinese) .