From 0 to 5 and Beyond: How AI Is Powering Cars24’s Next Phase of Growth

What drives a major online used car marketplace, to embrace AI at an unprecedented pace? 

From sporadic implementations of AI in other consumer tech platforms, we can make an educated guess that it will likely be about a few automations and AI-ing customer support. 

In the case of Cars24, which turned unicorn in 2020, some of these bits are true, but not the complete picture. AI is critical for the next phase of growth for the startup. The bet is also paying off. 

“When I started CARS24 nearly 11 years ago, I think my primary excitement was the power of the internet and technology,” Vikram Chopra, cofounder and CEO of Cars24, reflects during a sitdown with Entrepreneur India. 

“Using technology, we solved many problems in the used car business… But I think all the progress that we have made in the last decade has taken us from 0 to 5. And in a category like used cars, I think that’s how far the old internet can take you.”

Cars24’s “0 to 5” journey has been quite intriguing. Founded in 2015, Cars24 is among the few organised players in the used car industry, valued at USD 36.39 billion in 2025. Apart from becoming a unicorn, it expanded its services globally to the UAE, Thailand and Australia. 

Hitting a wall at “5” is quite understandable. It recently faced a major top-level churn with cofounders Mehul Agrawal and Gajendra Jangid exiting the company. Top executives Himanshu Ratnoo and Ankit Bhalla have departed too. How much impact this will have on the company, time shall tell.  

From a business point of view, Cars24 chased profitability for a very, very long time. 

In FY25, Cars24 India’s operating scale slumped 10% after a 25% YoY growth in the previous fiscal, according to Entrackr. Its net losses also surged 9 percent to INR 543 crore. The India unit reported gross revenue of INR 6,233, down from INR 6,910 in FY24. 

Recent financial metrics, however, give us clues to the journey from “5” onwards.

Cofounder Jangid earlier this year announced that Cars24 was officially profitable and that the Q4 FY25-26 became the best quarter the company had since inception.

The company said it posted INR 20 crore in Adjusted EBITDA in Q4 FY26. Moreover, in the H2 FY26, it saw its Adjusted Net Revenue grew 37 percent YoY to INR 760 crore whereas losses were down by 83 percent.

Source: Cars24

It added that retail GMV grew 35 percent YoY and now contributes over 60 percent of total transaction value, loans disbursed increased 57 percent YoY to INR 1,789 crore, and revenue per employee increased by 50 percent. 

One of the driving factors behind the much-awaited turnaround is AI. 

In a statement, Chopra had said: “…This is the half we became AI-native. Cars24 has been AI-first in pieces for years. In H2, the pieces started behaving like one platform. Engineering output is up 4x. Inspections, pricing, calls, document checks, fraud detection now run on AI by default. Revenue per employee is up 50%. The question at Cars24 is no longer whether AI helps the margin. It is how the business runs.”

During the sitdown, Chopra notes that going from 5 to 6 or 6 to 7 has been incredibly hard. 

“[But] Now with the advent of AI, I think these headwinds have literally overnight turned into tailwinds. I feel that I’m getting my company reborn,” he said.

“I think our profitability has also accelerated because of AI… We have had few percentage points of, EBITDA gain primarily because of AI, and we believe that we will continue to see that benefit going forward, both on the revenue growth as well as on the profitability,” he continued. 

The Trident 

Pre-AI, the company faced three core challenges: customers’ expectations, asset class, and operational engagements. 

Customer support

Chopra explains that a customer looking to buy or sell a car takes months to decide. And even after months, they may or may not buy a car. It’s a high involvement category, it takes a lot of time. 

“For us to physically provide assistance or relationship management to these customers is, is just humanly, physically impossible,” Chopra said.

AI now allows the company to handle every customer. According to the cofounder, the AI deployment has helped earn better engagement and even better conversions. 

This is because an AI agent, donning the relationship manager hat, can stay connected with a customer for a longer period of time. 

Chopra disclosed that they are seeing funnel improvements of up to 30 percent, and is confident that this will grow 2x in the near future. 

“So, it’s a beautiful state to be in where you are seeing higher revenue, higher sales, but you are also seeing more customer delight. So, customer experience is one area where given the long duration of, of, of a window where a customer wants to make a decision of buying a car, we could humanly never provide them the kind of support that we are now able to provide them with AI agents,” he added.

Asset class 

Like conventional car purchasing or reselling, the process is tedious even after a customer has confirmed a purchase. This is mainly because each car has to be dealt with unique process such as auditing background, running history, features, inspections, verifications, and other mundane tasks. 

“And given there is, each car is unique, there is judgment involved. And how do you solve that judgment? You solve for that judgment by putting in humans. But again, it slows you down. You are never able to do it absolutely right. Even when you make mistakes in 5% of cars, those 5% of mistakes can consume 80-90% of your time. So, it just slows you down tremendously,” he asks. 

Chopra added that the company has also deployed AI agents making the process much faster and efficient. 

Operations

And then follows another phase of tedious processes and tasks, which have conventionally required a lot of human effort. 

Chopra explains that a typical car transaction also involves processes of buying, selling, exchange, warranty, insurance, accessories, challans, and after sales support among others. 

The entire operation becomes super complex owing to dozens of workflows. 

“… with agents, we are able to simplify them and scale them. So, all these three things – customer engagement, assessing every car, and operations – each one of them had become a headwind for us. And we implemented the internet and technology to the extent we could, but there’s only so fast we are able to go. And now, all these headwinds have again become tailwinds, thanks to AI,” he said.

Cultural impact

A byproduct of AI deployment at scale is how the company approaches typical work titles and human staff. 

Earlier this year, Cars24 announced that it had done away with job titles, grades, and organisational brands. The thesis, according to the company, is that AI has created a flatland-like scenario with people coming together to solve exceptional reality. 

Vikram Chopra, Founder & CEO, Cars24

Chopra tells Entrepreneur India that in the AI regime, focus of salespersons/executives completely shifts from managing a lead and calling the customers back who had come last week, and, and doing those things as well, to only, to primarily focusing on the customers who are there at the showroom right now.

“It enhances the role of a, of a salesperson also, that most of their lead management work, most of their administrative work of following up, managing a lead, all of that work gets taken up by AI, so they can do what they really enjoy the most and that an AI can’t still do, is a one-to-one conversation when the customer actually pays a visit to our showroom,” he said. 

Going forward, the company is going to hire people who are “agentic first.” 

“In fact, now we have a criteria that regardless of your background, where you come from, what’s your experience, what’s your age… none of that matters if you have not built at least a couple of agents yourself, even the simplest of agents…” he added. 

AI Warchest 

Earlier this year, Cars24 announced the launch of ‘Cars24 Lab’ with a commitment of USD 20 million. 

As part of this initiative, Cars24 is building proprietary AI products across its stack, and open-source models for everyone. Another important objective is to invest and incubate early-stage startups. This also involves capital deployment and assistance with operational expertise. 

We partner with the companies building frontier AI. OpenAI, ElevenLabs, and AWS are already in. It means early access, shared infrastructure, and direct access to the teams pushing what comes next.

Lastly, it aims to team up with companies building frontier AI. It has already onboarded ElevenLabs, AWS, and OpenAI for this purpose. 

To put things into perspective, using OpenAI APIs, Cars24 has developed AI-powered voice and chat agents that support customers 

“When a buyer calls Cars24, an AI agent asks about their budget, family size, commute needs, and preferred car type. It recommends cars from the Cars24 catalog, books a test drive, and can help the customer explore financing,” according to an Open AI blog. 

Source: OpenAI

Internally, Cars24 has deployed ChatGPT Enterprise and Codex to about 600 employees across its central organization, with 85% to 90% daily active usage, the blog added. Teams in engineering, finance, legal, marketing, and operations now use AI to build workflows, automate recurring tasks, and move work across systems more efficiently.

Furthermore, Cars24 recently launched Deployment Inc with an investment of USD 5 million.

Deployment Inc will serve as a separate entity serving categories like fintech, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and more. The startup is aimed at helping organisations design, implement and operate AI systems across workflows.

The Agentic Enterprise

As Cars24 prepares for its next phase of corporate growth, its AI pivot offers a case study for several tech companies struggling with margin compression and operational bloat, probably the 0-5 stagnation.

By refusing to view generative AI as merely a cost-cutting tool or an automated chat interface, CARS24 is restructuring the basic mechanics of how a company operates.

“10 years ago I had the opportunity to transform used cars with the internet. I got so far, and now I think I can go way further ahead with AI at the forefront. That’s why we wholeheartedly want to become an AI-native company,” Chopra said. 

Cars24’s rapid AI pivot comes at a time when the company is reportedly planning to go for an IPO. While Chopra did not give us a timeline, improved profitability and margins, courtesy AI, suggest it’s not off the menu for the 11-year-old startup as of now. Also, it remains to be seen how further the enterprise, especially in the used car marketplace, transitions with the AI, which itself is going through rapid and exponential evolution.