Demonetisation impact: Truebil registers 30 pct surge in sales

On completion of one year of the Centre's demonetisation drive, Truebil, an omni-channel platform for the purchase and sale of pre-owned cars stated that although sales were down by 15 percent post rollout, it received a 30 percent boost post February this year.

It was reported that many cash-intensive sectors like manufacturing, real estate and even the automobile industry that were growing rapidly, reported contraction in the October-December quarter of 2016.

Truebil too faced the heat with a drop of 15 percent in sales for a couple of months due to the decline in market sentiment.

The sales of passenger vehicles, however, started increasing by 15 percent year-on-year in January 2017, followed by a conversion of the latent demand, helping Truebil to boost sales by an above-average 30 percent by February, 2017.

The purchasing power of consumers was negatively affected during the initial phase of demonetisation. At Truebil, prices of all the cars dropped to 10-15 percent on an average. But, eventually, it started witnessing improvements and a good growth backed by a consumer-friendly budget, strong details of low-interest rates and steady fuel prices.

"The impact of the demonetisation drive was short-lived for Truebil as we started converting the latent demand for used cars on our platform quite quickly. While consumers were spending cautiously for a few months after November, they were agile in moving back to trusted platforms such as ours to undertake car purchases once things had settled down. In fact, the passenger vehicle sales in India crossed the three-million mark for the first time in 2016-17 and the demand is constantly rising," said Shubh Bansal, Co-founder and Marketing Head at Truebil.

"In retrospect, one can safely say that demonetisation has, in fact, created a huge positive impact in the auto industry. It has helped organised players like us by streamlining processes further - such as making Pan Number mandatory for big-ticket purchases. However, the unorganised sector has witnessed a drop in cash-based sales which will prove to be beneficial for the eco-system as a whole in the long run," he added.

On November 8 last year, the old Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes - 86 percent of currency in circulation - were scrapped after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an unexpected announcement during a surprise television address.

He also gave the nation's 1.3 billion people a 50-day window to either deposit them into bank accounts or exchange them for minted notes.

Intended to be a surprise tactic to destroy the black market, the move didn't go as smoothly as planned. From shortage of new banknotes to uncalibrated ATMs to people suddenly finding themselves standing for hours in queues, India started feeling the pinch.

While the first quarter of demonetisation created initial disruption in the Indian economy, industry as well as consumers eventually witnessed the positive impact of demonetisation within the first year of its implementation.