Our platform facilitated S$1.5 million worth of car sales within our first year by helping car sellers get the best deals.

In one line, what do you do and what is your most significant achievement?

We built a platform that helps car sellers get the best deals, generating over 7,000 engaged subscribers and facilitating S$1.5 million worth of car sales within our first year.

Who are you and what business did you start?

My name is Davidson, and I'm the co-founder of Telequotes, Singapore's first aggregator platform for car sellers.

Telequotes was born out of a simple yet frustrating problem faced by car sellers. The overwhelming challenge of comparing quotes from multiple platforms to find the best deal. Selling a car in Singapore can often feel like navigating a maze, with inconsistent quotes, hidden fees, and the time-consuming process of contacting various dealers.

That's where Telequotes steps in. We've built a platform that streamlines the entire car-selling process by consolidating quotes from multiple trusted platforms and dealers into a single view. Sellers can compare offers side by side and confidently choose the highest bid without any guesswork. Our mission is to empower car sellers with transparency, convenience, and the assurance that they're getting the best possible deal for their vehicles.

What's your backstory?

I've been a car enthusiast since a young age, spending hours scrolling through multiple classified platforms just to admire cars, even when I knew I couldn't afford one.

That passion eventually led to the creation of a community channel on Telegram, where I would share unique and interesting car listings I found online. What started as a casual hobby quickly grew into something bigger. With a friend, we developed a bot to help individual sellers and dealers facilitate the car listing process on our channel, making it easier for them to reach more interested buyers. But as the channel grew, it began to resemble just another classifieds platform.

The turning point came when we partnered with a major local platform to provide ready buyer quotes to individual sellers. This empowered them to sell their cars immediately to ready buyers, marking our entry into the C2B marketplace.

Yet, despite the progress, I couldn't ignore the challenges sellers faced. When a family member tried to sell their car, I saw firsthand how tedious and inefficient it was to gather multiple quotes from different platforms and dealers. Each promised the best price, but the quotes were inconsistent, and there was no simple way to compare them all at once.

That experience highlighted a major gap in the industry—something that should have been transparent and straightforward was unnecessarily complex and time-consuming.

Combining my passion for cars with a drive to solve real-world problems, I envision Telequotes to be a platform designed to take the hassle out of car selling.

Telequotes consolidates quotes from multiple platforms, helping sellers save time while ensuring they get the best possible deal. What started as a personal project has evolved into a mission to redefine how car sellers connect with dealers in Singapore.

What should be the first steps to take to enter your industry?

Entering the car-related C2B marketplace or lead generation industry requires a deep understanding of the market, developing the right tools, and establishing a value-driven platform.

It's crucial to engage with both sellers and partners to understand their challenges—whether it's inefficiencies, lack of transparency, or inconsistent pricing. Listening to their needs and pain points lays the foundation for creating meaningful solutions.

Most importantly, the key is to consistently deliver value to all parties involved. Success in this industry hinges on creating a "3-Wins" situation a win for the seller, a win for the partners, and a win for us.

How did you spend your First 100 Days of launching your business?

For a platform like ours, the first 100 days were all about finding the right balance. Like all platforms, the key was managing the supply and demand of our users. We aimed to provide as many quotes as possible to our sellers while ensuring that the leads coming through us were high-quality (sellers) for our partners.

We started with a soft launch through our existing Telegram community, where we had already cultivated a small but engaged audience of car enthusiasts. Through this channel, we introduced the concept of Telequotes and demonstrated how it could simplify the car-selling process.

At the same time, we actively reached out to local car dealerships and platforms, offering them opportunities to collaborate. By positioning ourselves as a bridge between sellers and dealers, we worked to secure as many partnerships as possible with car platforms and dealers to strengthen the ecosystem.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain partnerships/customers?

Since launching Telequotes, our commitment to delivering consistent value and fostering trust on both sides of the platform helped us a lot in moving forward.

For customers (car sellers), we focus on providing a hassle-free experience by simplifying the car-selling process. Transparency is a key part of our approach and we clearly communicate how the process works, what fees are involved, and how sellers benefit from using Telequotes. Content marketing has also played a significant role in attracting customers. Through blogs, social media posts, and Telegram updates, we educate sellers on the car-selling process, providing tips and insights that build trust and keep them engaged.

For partners (dealers and platforms), we've emphasised quality over quantity. Dealers appreciate that we focus on bringing them serious, high-quality leads from sellers who are ready to transact. We've built strong relationships with major car platforms by positioning ourselves as a value-added partner that enhances their access to motivated sellers. Regular communication and feedback loops have been crucial in retaining these partnerships, as we actively listen to their needs and refine our offerings to match.

What has taken you from 0 to 100?

The breakthrough that took Telequotes from 0 to 100 was leveraging our existing Telegram community as a launchpad. It started as a humble channel for sharing interesting car listings, but it quickly grew into a highly engaged audience of car enthusiasts and potential sellers. This community gave us an invaluable head start, allowing us to test our concept with real users and gather immediate feedback.

Another pivotal moment was when we secured our first partnership with a major local car platform. This collaboration not only validated our business model but also gave us access to a wider network of sellers and dealers, dramatically increasing our reach and credibility. It showed us the power of partnerships and set the stage for scaling our platform.

Behind the scenes, the development of our custom bot and ongoing web developments to streamline the car listing and bidding process was a game-changer. It automated key parts of the workflow, making the experience seamless for users while ensuring we could handle growing demand efficiently. These combined elements—community, partnerships, and smart automation created the momentum that pushed us forward and do better for both our sellers and partners each day.

What is one underrated thing in your industry that business owners should start doing/using?

One underrated yet highly impactful practice in the car marketplace industry is leveraging real-time data analytics to personalize the user experience and optimize decision-making for both sellers and partners. This is especially relevant in Singapore, where car prices are highly sensitive and closely tied to fluctuations in the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) market.

While many businesses in the industry focus on volume to maximize the number of listings or leads, few prioritise tailoring the experience to each user. Hence, by analyzing data such as seller preferences, car valuation trends, and dealer buying behaviors, businesses can provide sellers with personalized recommendations (e.g., identifying the optimal time to sell based on market conditions) and connect dealers with the most relevant leads.

This approach not only boosts customer satisfaction but also improves lead quality, fostering stronger and more sustainable partnerships and transparencies in the car industry.

What was one failure you had to go through that others in your industry should look out for?

One significant failure we encountered was underestimating the importance of lead quality over lead quantity early on.

In the rush to grow our platform, we focused heavily on attracting as many car sellers as possible, thinking that a higher volume of leads would automatically translate into success for both sellers and our dealer partners.

However, we quickly realised that not all leads are equal and sending of low-quality or unverified leads to dealers eroded their trust in our platform and strained some early partnerships.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

Lark is our primary tool for team communication and collaboration, enabling seamless messaging and document management within our team. For email, we use a combination of Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 to cater to our operational needs.

Additionally, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) plays a crucial role in tracking user behavior and performance metrics on our platform. It helps us refine the user experience, optimize marketing efforts, and make continuous improvements to our SEO strategies. Additionally, we rely on Cloudflare for DDoS protection, website performance optimization, and secure DNS management.

For web development and hosting, we use Heroku to host our custom-built bots and backend services, while Vercel handles the deployment and management of our front-end web applications, ensuring fast performance and seamless updates. AWS serves as our cloud infrastructure provider, offering scalable solutions for data storage and computational needs.

We are constantly exploring ways to streamline our tech stack and remain committed to finding the most efficient and optimized solutions to support our growth.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

Today, we're focused on refining and expanding Telequotes to ensure it becomes the go-to platform for C2B selling. Our immediate goal is to empower car sellers with a seamless and transparent process while providing dealers with high-quality leads to build their inventories. But our vision doesn't stop there. We plan on diversifying into other product categories, creating a unified platform for selling items like electronics, watches, and more.

In today's world, most platforms are built to encourage buying, spending, and consumption. Yet, there's a noticeable gap—there aren't enough platforms designed to help people sell quickly, effortlessly, and at the best possible price. Telequotes aims to fill that void by creating a solution that skips the hassle and delivers real value to sellers and dealers alike.

Our long-term vision is rooted in the "win-win-win" principle – a win for sellers who can sell fast and at the best price, a win for dealers who receive quality leads, and a win for us as a platform that bridges the gap between the two.

By continuing to innovate and adapt, we're committed to building the next-generation C2B selling platform, one that empowers individuals and businesses to sell with confidence and ease.