Manisha - our new CMO behind the wheel

Manisha Seewal has recently joined Gumtree CarsGuide Autotrader in the role of Chief Marketing Officer. She comes to us after a highly successful stint as CMO for Singapore-based used car marketplace, Carro. CarsGuide Editor Malcolm Flynn sat down with Manisha during her first week in her new role.

MF: Manisha, welcome to Australia and the new job! You’ve been here a few weeks now - what appeals to you most about living in Australia?

MS: I love the way Sydney comes alive really early in the morning. I’m a morning person and to have the sunrise at 5:30am is a real blessing. When I go for a run at 6am the city if buzzing with energy. It’s a very different experience for me, because for the past 20 years of living in Singapore, the sun doesn’t rise before 7am. So its quite dark when you exercise in the morning, but in Sydney things are open early.

I love the energy, the people are friendly and in the evenings the pubs are so happening. And of course everything’s cheaper compared to Singapore, including cars.

MF: I’ve heard a rumour that you don’t just work with cars, but you’re a bit of a car fan as well. Where did your love of cars come from?

MS: When I was really young, I think I was 13, I learned how to drive a manual car at home in India. It was my Mum’s car. My uncle would secretly take me out driving for lessons while my Mum was working as a doctor in the hospital.

I got a rush from doing something that was a little bit naughty and not allowed. I loved the speed, even though it was just a tiny Maruti Suzuki with an 800cc engine - they sold millions of them in India. But that feeling of rolling down the window and having the wind on your face and in your hair was just magical. MF: What was the first car you owned?

MS: It was also a Suzuki 800, a blue Maruti-Suzuki, and I drove it for close to a year. I loved that after a certain speed - like maybe 70km/h - the steering wheel would start shaking.

MF: Which car would you buy if you had no budget limit?

MS: If I didn’t have a budget I think I would want to get a Bugatti.

MF: So that’s 16 cylinders and four turbos, fastest car in the world status.

MS: I’d probably have to find a road where there’s no speed limit and just go for it. Can you imagine going from a MarutiSuzuki 800 to a Bugatti?!

MF: What drew you to work in the auto industry?

MS: My love of cars and because I changed 10 cars in 14 years in Singapore, which is one of the world’s most expensive places to buy a car.

As a car seller, I went through the whole buying and selling of the cars myself. I went from dealership to dealership, sometimes putting it up on the classifieds myself and dealing directly with the sellers. I felt the entire experience of buying and selling used cars was really terrible. We have progressed so much technologically, then why is this industry so backward? Why can’t we digitise the car buying and selling experience and make it simpler?

MF: Your previous success story with Carro is pretty amazing, with the Southeast Asian used car buying platform growing to a $1 billion business within six years. What were some of the key challenges you had during your time at Carro?

MS: Well, one of the big things when you’re opening up in a new market is hiring. Who do you hire as the first guy in a new country? We said we were going to hire for operations first, because there’s no point spending on anything else, except for Ops.

You’ve got to find the right rock star who is willing, who believes in the business and who has that local knowledge, because Southeast Asia is all different countries and totally different languages, different foods - the nuances are just different. We needed somebody who could drive the story in the local market and hire the right people.

At the same time, we had to make sure that we had ample supply of cars. Because of COVID and the whole global chip shortage, the demand for used cars is just through the roof around the world, so getting a robust supply was critical.

MF: So what excites you about coming to work for Gumtree CarsGuide Autotrader?

MS: For this organisation, what excites me most is we have three fantastic brands that have their own strengths. Gumtree is almost like a household name, everybody knows Gumtree, which gives us scale, in terms of traffic. One out of three Aussies are going to Gumtree, pretty much organically. I think that’s a huge, huge scale. Then there’s CarsGuide as the leading automotive editorial* in the country. Automotive is such an immersive experience. This is an achievement to be extremely proud of because it’s highly competitive.

Then there’s Autotrader which is very popular with dealerships and it’s really growing quickly.

So the marketplace play is: You have customers coming from Gumtree, and you have dealers coming in from Autotrader and then this overlay of CarsGuide and its beautiful editorial.

All that enables a very charged up customer experience, especially buying a car digitally. That is what excites me. That’s the vision that I have for the three brands that at the end of the day we give our customer a fantastic experience, that they know that they have all the information about the car, because of the quality of editorial and also the car history, and they know that the dealership is going to take care of them because they have good relationship with Autotrader.

MF: Where do you see Gumtree CarsGuide Autotrader in three years?

MS: I see the three brands coming together forming a sizable percentage of online car buying and selling in Australia.

MF: Sounds good to me!