YoCarma will expand to other states soon.
By Raif Karerat
The auto maintenance industry can be a confusing, convoluted place for the average layman, which is exactly what Indian American entrepreneur Kripa Venkatachalam found when she attempted to settle an accident without involving insurance companies last year.
Speaking to freelance writer Priya Ramachandran, Venkatachalam explained just how difficult the scenario turned out to be:
“As she shopped around for the service and shared estimates with me, I found that estimates varied markedly from $700 to $1500 for a simple job,” says Venkatachalam. Neither woman understood how or why a $700 estimate differed from a $1,500 one. When Venkatachalam spoke to people about her experience, she realized something important about the auto maintenance industry: there is no transparency about why services are priced the way they are. More importantly, consumers either don’t know, or don’t have enough time to do the necessary research to shop for the best maintenance or repair plan.
Following the conclusion of the irksome ordeal, Venkatachalam decided that she ought to provide a solution for what appeared to be a widespread problem. To focus her endeavor, she rented a booth at a fair and interviewed more than 100 people regarding their approaches to car maintenance and found that many shared her frustrations about the lack of transparency in pricing.
The interviews clinched it — Venkatachalam became hell-bent on creating a product that could alleviate the issues consumers were having with the auto maintenance industry. She sought out technical advice from a close friend, came up with the technical specs for an app it developed by a team in India.
While the app was delivered by the given deadline, the code turned out to be a mess, so Venkatachalam quit her job in February, taught herself the Objective-C programming language, and got cracking herself.
Having debuted in August, Venkatachalam ‘s app, called YoCarma, is now available for Apple devices. The app provides an avenue for convenient research, maintains a history of your car maintenance, and provides reminders before service is due.
It features providers from the San Ramon area — Pleasanton, Dublin, Danville — in California, and allows users to shop around for and schedule oil changes in these areas.
The YoCarma team plans to expands the app to other areas in the Bay area by the end of the year.
“I tell my kids that there is a new “baby” in the family and that everyone needs to help raise the new baby as a priority. Our family has learnt to prioritize YoCarma above all else … we can safely equate this time of our lives to how it used to be when my girls were newborns,” remarked Venkatachalam. “On the professional side, what I am going through is riveting and feels like learning-on-steroids. This has been a fantastic journey so far, coming face to face with my fears and strengths.”