Going to a mechanic is painstakingly boring and sitting there always feels like an eternity, doesn’t it? What if you can get the guy come to you instead? That’s what a Karachi-based startup, MechanicUstaad.pk, is offering: scheduled repair and maintenance services at your doorstep.

All you have to do is, go to their website, choose a category (car, bike, or generator), fill in the details regarding the model, etc, specify the services required along with date and time and submit the form. You will then get a call from them, confirming (or not) the slot.

Leaving fancy cars and bikes, they cater to pretty much all other machines. From oil change and basic maintenance to tuning and parts replacement, they offer all mechanical and a few electrical works. However, service or more capital-intensive repairing is not available. The mechanics are dressed in MechanicUstaad’s uniform, equipped with a toolbox, and do all the work right there and then.

The startup was launched in January 2016 by three colleagues —Khizer Ahmed, Mohsin Mohiuddin and Sajid Sheikh — trying to find a way around late salaries and hedging potential unemployment risks.

“For a long time, it was a side thing for us while we had full-time jobs. But as we got more customers, the load became too much so around four months ago, I volunteered to quit my job and started managing it full-time while the other,” Khizer says.

The website is pretty basic, with booking done through a simplistic form. Bulks of their orders are actually placed via phone or Facebook. And that casts doubts over the success of a tech-enabled startup, which plans to disrupt a traditional industry.

“None of us co-founders had any tech background and we didn’t have the money to make investments there so it was neglected a bit until we got other things in order. But now our app’s beta version is ready and plan to bring its developer on board full time hopefully within the next two months,” he further explained.

They initially started out with just the bikes but then ventured into generators, and by December 2017, had entered cars business as well. “We realised the margins were too low in bikes while others [cars and generators] were the more profitable options,” the co-founder recalls.

While individual consumer market is quite sizable in itself, MechanicUstaad’s primary focus is the corporate sector. “We have around nine clients, most having their own fleet and generators which are exclusively looked after by us,” he claims. With most of the clients, the startup works on a fixed monthly fee while the rest are on-demand.

So far, the trio has managed through bootstrapping but now they are eyeing seed round this year in order to scale up both tech and marketing. As for revenues, there is a mix of commission and monthly retainers with corporates. Currently just operating in Karachi, Khizer and co are still reluctant to expand to other cities as they still have a small team and not yet the money to hire more people.

They have around five mechanics full-time on a monthly payroll plus a few outsourced vendors across Karachi, taking their total network to around 25. However, the trio hopes to expand the in-house network and reduce dependency on vendors. “With outsourced guys, we often don’t have too much control over the customer service so we want to bring everyone under our brand,” Khizer says.

But vehicles, and given the recent frequency of power outages, generators too are quite a sensitive matter and you can’t just trust another guy from the internet with these things, right? Good then that they are not just random guys. “We have partnered with Aman Foundation and Memon Institute of Technology so our mechanics get vocational training from there, in addition to generally having a solid hands-on experience as well,” he claims.

However, generally most people have their own mechanics and always turn to them for scheduled works so a website for that might not interest many. What’d rather capture their attention is if there’s an instant on-call service when you are, let’s say, stuck in a far-flung area or need emergency repair. “We are actually working on this: an on-call service to get a mechanic within 60 minutes but for that, we need improvements on the tech side so it will take around 2-3 months,” the co-founder shares.

Within the same space, there are a few local players such as Carigar from Karachi and Autogenie from Lahore offering similar services. But Khizer doesn’t feel threatened. “All of our competitors have focused only on cars, while we are doing it all. So in that sense, it’s not much of a rivalry,” Khizer tells Dawn.

So until we find a way to come up with machines that never act up, a mechanic at your doorstep doesn’t sound too bad.

The writer is member of staff:
m.mutaherkhan@gmail.com
Twitter: @MutaherKhan

Published in Dawn, January 6th, 2019