SiamCarDeal slips into higher gear with $300,000 funding from 500 TukTuks and angel investors

Damien Kerneis, the firm’s co-founder, said that, when launching siamcardeal.com in 2016, the aim was to be a platform for those who wanted to buy a new car and search for the best deals.
“We received a lot of positive feedback from both consumers and dealers. Consumers got their new car at a great price while dealers increased their sales with this new channel,” he said. “As we went along, we saw opportunities to go deeper in the value chain and developed more products and services to support car dealers.”
In 2018, SiamCarDeal supported its nationwide partners to sell over 3,000 cars, representing US$75 million in deals.
“We currently partner with over 100 car dealers across the country and provide more than 1,500 offers for consumers,” Kerneis said. “When a potential buyer shows interest in the deal on our website, we will qualify the inquiry and send it in real-time to the showroom with our in-house developed software called LMS (Lead Management System). With this system, our partner showrooms can conveniently manage their database of prospects, and their salespeople can follow up more efficiently, resulting in an increased sales closing ratio. Now our LMS system is extensively used by our customers in Thailand and across CLMV” added Kerneis, referring to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
Natavudh Pungcharoenpong, a managing partner at 500 TukTuks, said SiamCarDeal is a unique platform in the Thai automotive market, which is highly competitive as car manufacturers compete for market share, offering promotions for different types of buyers to boost sales.
“SiamCarDeal seamlessly helps to allocate sales opportunities to dealers with its real-time LMS technology. We can see that SiamCarDeal has the potential to grow in a very good direction,” he said.
Krating Poonpol, also managing partner of 500 TukTuks said: “We believe that SiamCarDeal’s LMS software offers a forward-looking perspective for the industry since it can be used by all automotive businesses. With this end-to-end solution SiamCarDeal has developed. We see big market opportunities for them domestically and abroad where SiamcarDeal can further expand to the regional level.”
Kerneis said: “In 2019, SiamcarDeal will embark on the journey of digital transformation for automotive businesses by expanding more services which will help the showrooms to improve their overall efficiency and increase their sales volume. In addition, we also have plans to bring technology to help support the used car market.”