How Pakwheels.com came to drive automobile sales in Pakistan

Published on: July 22, 2018

“People around us did make fun of us, saying it won’t work, calling us crazy for thinking cars could be sold this way. But if we had listened to them then, we wouldn’t be here today,” says Suneel Sarfaraz Munj, co-founder and Chairman of Pakwheels.com, Pakistan’s largest online marketplace and discussion forum for all car-related matters.

VCast Online had a conversation with Suneel and his co-founder, Muhammad Raza Saeed, as they outlined their entrepreneurial journey from its initial beginnings at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), to becoming the face of a multimillion-dollar resale industry.

Pakwheels.com was founded in 2003 by Hanif Bhatti as a message board for car enthusiasts and was acquired by Suneel and Raza in 2008, who have since led its transformation and establishment as a trusted platform of informed trade – with technology-driven innovation at the core of their business objectives.

Their website now includes a detailed report of each car’s maintenance condition, called a “CarSure Report”, as well as a “Used Car Price Calculator,” which uses a regression model based on market prices to accurately range and value used cars listed on the website, so that users know what figure to bargain for.

In 2014, the website was able to secure $3.5 million in seed funding from Malaysian-based Frontier Digital Ventures, strengthening their leadership position within Pakistan’s e-commerce landscape.

According to PakWheels.com, the site now gets over 25 million visitors annually, with over 400,000 vehicles being bought and sold through the website in 2017.

Suneel and Raza are confident of their growth potential within Pakistan’s automotive sector and expect to have their hands full in the years to come. Watch this video to find out why.