Local app aims to become 'addictive' tool

Singapore

IF YOU no longer need to drop in on your favourite restaurant in order to gorge on its specialties, then why should you drive your car to a workshop to have it serviced? That's the thinking behind AutoApp, a concierge service for drivers that aims to replace the legwork of car ownership with a few taps on your smartphone.

Last month, the service launched a collaboration with SPC Lubricants. Customers can have an AutoApp "service ambassador" take their car for servicing at one of the oil giant's SPC SpeedyCare workshops and return it after, for S$50 instead of the S$68 it usually charges.

Its crew is insured to drive customer cars, and the partnering workshops communicate with customers through the app.

For its part in the collaboration, SPC will throw in a S$10 fuel voucher. It says its Synace line of engine lubricants are certified for use by BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Volkswagen and other car manufacturers.

AutoApp is pitched not at the lazy, but the time-poor. Ignition Labs, the company that developed the app, says studies show that servicing a car typically costs owners four to six hours.

Ignition Labs envisions AutoApp as a one-stop mobile app for drivers. Beyond servicing appointments, it handles the more mind-numbing aspects of car ownership such as road tax renewal or taking a car for inspection, and since launch has added partners to broaden its range of services, some of them novel ones.

A tie-up with SP Group enables electric car owners to use the app to have someone whisk their vehicles away for charging, for example.

Pirelli, the Italian tyre giant, will pay for customers' cars to be deeply sanitised if they buy new tyres through the app.

More than 1,000 users have signed up with Autoapp in the 10 months since the service went live.

"I think people are keeping the app and using it like a phone number that you want to keep in your wallet, in case something goes wrong and you need assistance," says Sheldon Trollope, who is in charge of communications and product at Ignition Labs.

In the next 12 months, Ignition Labs is hoping to have 10,000 to 15,000 users. With that user base, the app would fulfil 10 to 15 jobs a day and generate about S$2 million in turnover, Mr Trollope estimates.

"What's encouraging is that we experience a high percentage of repeat business. Just over 25 per cent of our customers have used us at least twice," Mr Trollope says.

He points out that it's in the nature of car ownership to have some sort of need arise every few months, and feels that the more frequently users reach for the app, the more they are likely to do so again. "At the end of the day, convenience is very addictive," he says.

Mr Trollope says Ignition Labs is open to working with "everyone" to offer services through AutoApp. Its collaboration with SPC Speedycare and other workshops is an example of how it can drum up business precisely because the customer would rather not be there.