The New Auto Buyer: How AI is reshaping the journey from Discovery to Decision | Autocar India

Hello and welcome to a special program on the new car buyer. Now the automotive purchase journey is changing. It's no longer linear. It's no longer straightforward. In fact, it's multigenerational and quite complex. Today, a new car buyer, prospective new car buyer will discover a car on video, on YouTube, do a search for pricing and

specifications, seek expert opinions, discuss it with family and friends, go back to search and to the dealership before finally making his uh decision. And on top of that of course is AI which is really accelerating and driving this change adding new layers to the way car buyers research compare and validate their choices before making a purchase. So on

this very uh interesting topic I have a very eminent panel with me and uh on my left I have Mr. Nalnik Golagunta who's the CEO of uh Mahindra Auto. I have Sedar Shaker the director of Google India, Ashish Gupta brand head for Scoda Auto India and Vive Shivas the chief commercial officer of Tata Motor. So

thank you very much gentlemen for joining us. Um uh Sedat, I'd like to start with you because uh you've done this uh study uh on you know the kind of new purchasing um uh let's say behavior quite interesting. We've gone through it. Uh some uh good takeaways which I liked which clearly I think some of the

uh motivations or the triggers are still uh the same as they were. I think 40% bought a car to match the standard of their uh social circles. One other interesting point is that 40% bought it for road tripping uh or or were motivated to buy it for road tripping and weekend trips. So that's uh you know

something which is obviously uh feeds into the aspirational aspect of the car. And then of course there's the influence part of it. Clearly car buying is become very deeply collaborative and media habits. I think that's uh something that's really come out. people are watching more, reading less and um of course uh on the car buying journey I