CARBENGKEL MEDIA LAUNCH AT THE CRADLE FUND SDN BHD

On behalf of the CarBengkel team, we are grateful to all the media and guests that attended our small and simple product launching in conjunction with the upcoming festive season at the Cradle Fund office yesterday.

CarBengkel is a product of Cradle CIP Catalyst pre-seed funding. Being a recipient of government grant for the development of the application, the first thing we learn was to budget and to operate within a very limited budget. Naturally, our media launching was not held at five star hotels or expensive restaurants but at the training room at Cradle itself.

My journey with Cradle has been very educational and exciting.

When we first approach Cradle, we knew exactly what we wanted to do! We have the idea, the experience and the business plan. We did not have the product but we have everything else.... and so we thought!!

When we thought we knew and had everything, Cradle further completes it. Cradle had completed and make concrete whatever idea we have. The grant is actually a smaller contribution to what Cradle provides as a package.

Many new start up failed because they are their own bosses and being our own bosses, sometimes we feel we are right and that we knew everything. Cradle broadens our perspective and thinking methodology. It is not just the fund that came with Cradle but the support system that became our brainstorming partners.

At Cradle, we have to convinced alot of people who knew nothing about our business and some of them can be critical. This is very important because now I know, if anyone can convinced Cradle, they can actually convinced anyone. You cannot bullshit these professionals.

I am most grateful to Eizar Supiar and Dalena Zulkifli whom were the Cradle business managers assigned to us and would like to extend our big thank you for their tireless effort working with us on weekends and in discussion with us till late night. All the officials are with us on personal handphone basis. That was how committed they are.

Because of them as well as my dedicated core team, we delivered our mobile applications within less than 2 months (from the given minimum delivery period of 6 months).

We are also grateful to Joanne Timbuong and her team for organising the launching at Cradle and for inviting the media. She too worked over the weekends and late night to make our event a success.

Explaining to Cradle Fund CEO, Nazrin Hassan

Most of us own at least 1 car and evidently with 20 million vehicles registered with JPJ (on the backdrop of slightly less than 30 million population), we can safely say almost every household has a car.

Corporal Amir from bootcamp reciting the doa

Sure we have a budget set aside for our house mortgage repayment as well as car loan repayment but most would use the credit card (or borrowings) to pay for car maintenance. We usually do not have a budget for car repair and maintenance.

We hardly or rarely attended our yearly medical health check-up, let alone to bring our car for its regular service. Why? because we do not have the time? Ignorant of the cost of missing the service? Did not have the budget? Don't know where to go?

Do we actually remember when was the last time we send our car for a service? Unless the car is coughing or sick, we hardly visit the workshop. Maybe we did and wasted alot of time driving around shopping for the best quote, queuing and waiting for the car to be serviced.

Do we actually remember when is the next service? Did you know that our wheels needed to be regularly aligned too? What do we do when our car breakdown? Who do we call? Where do we go for a tyre change? How much does it cost to change 4 tyres? Which brand is available and the most reasonable? What are the latest promotions for service, repair and tyres? Which workshop provides the best promotion and service?

This became the basic fundamentals and part of the feature provided by CarBengkel for car owners.Wherever you are, CarBengkel via GPS will locate all the nearest workshops to your location within your pre-set kilometer radius. Our tagline for car owners - Your Mechanic is always nearby.

The partnership with the Malaysian Automotive Institute (MA) was in tandem to the National Automotive Policy 2014 and MAI's initiatives to make the aftermarket to be more resilient. It target the following objectives for the car owners:

a) Educate the public on their car care and maintenance.

b) For new car buyer to be aware and be reminded of their mandatory service warranty maintenance and the estimated cost for each service (via CarBengkel Scheduler feature)

c) Reduce car maintenance cost by getting the most reasonably priced package for services through the "request for quotation" and "latest promotions" feature.

There are no cost or fees for car owners to download and use all the features in Carbengkel.

For the automotive workshops, MAI and CarBengkel aimed to educate workshops to adopt technology in their workshop operation to be more resilient and profitable by us channeling more customers via CarBengkel to the respective workshop. Our tagline for CarBengkel Workshop - We add more customers, You service them.

There are no cost to download the apps and there is no investment or start-up cost for the workshop. Workshop will only be charged RM5 when they accept any job requested by Car owners via CarBengkel.

Cameron Wilson, Continental Vice President

We are pleased to be collaborating with Continental Tyres whom have been very supportive of Malaysia Automotive Institute and our initiatives to adopt technology into their workshop operations. Continental are currently on a nationwide roadshow to educate their retailers to use CarBengkel to further improve their business.

We have pre-registered and pre-approved all Proton, Perodua and Continental authorised dealers. Most of the dealers had already activated its account but for those Proton, Perodua and Continental dealers whom have not activated their account, please call our HOTLINE 03-77239324 for your username and password.

For other workshops that is interested to join CarBengkel, please apply online at HERE.

Additional reading:

1. Bernama: Applikasi CarBengkel selesaikan masalah permotoran
2. Edgy.my: CarBengkel app can find you a trustworthy mechanics
3. NST: CarBengkel app finds the right workshop for you

4. CarBengkel mobile app sets out to solve motoring woes
5. CarBengkel provides an easy way to fix your car issues