Eccentric Engine, a digital auto retail experience platform company, which is home to top automotive brands in India in their digital transformation journey, has now set eyes on a truly global footprint. They are now gearing to deliver their flagship offering, ‘Virtual Retail Cloud’ in January to U.S. dealerships.
A McKinsey Automotive report estimates that more than 25% of the current US$ 3 trillion new cars market is set to go virtual by 2025 globally.
The company is now registered as Eccentric Inc. in the U.S. (known as Eccentric Engine in India) and plans for deep investments in industry agnostic virtual tools, which are being deployed first for automotive retail in U.S. starting this month. The first showcase of their new metaverse tech is being demonstrated at the upcoming North American Dealer Association (NADA) conference that attracts top dealers and auto OEMs from the North America, from January 26-29, in Dallas.
Varun Shah, Co-Founder and CEO Eccentric Engine added, “We are excited about the new growth path of Eccentric Engine that is transforming the company to become a global player. We look forward to extending the best of virtual retailing to our OEM & Dealer partners across the world. By virtue of Virtual Retail Cloud, we welcome new car dealers across North American to adopt a scalable and cutting-edge retail experience”
The U.S. market is experiencing a sea of concepts in automotive retail metaverse, of which, several concepts were featured at the 2023 CES in Las Vegas, NV, USA earlier in the month. At the 2023 NADA Show, Eccentric Inc. will demonstrate ready-to-use solutions on how virtual retailing, which encompasses 3D & AR-VR, can actually be deployed at scale for North American dealerships.
Shah added, “Over the last one year, I personally met a diverse group of global dealers, spent time onsite to understand global dealership models, customer expectations and the gaps that existed. It was evident that the dealers had a broken experiences and are yearning to provide their buyers one-stop solution to their prospects to enable a faster and intelligent purchase decision. Unlike other technology companies, we have honed the expertise to deploy and measure at scale.”
Eccentric Inc. has signed up two new customers in the Bay Area, Stevens Creek VW (American Motors Group) and Dublin Cadillac (California Automotive Retailing Group). The 3D platform will allow dealerships to design unique virtual retail interfaces to help buyers explore cars in an immersive experience and make an informed decision.
Joe Castelino, Fixed Operations Director, American Motors Group, which owns Stevens Creek Volkswagen, remarked “Being in the heart of Silicon Valley, technology is a way of life for our customers. We are excited to partner with Eccentric Engine to demonstrate an engaging and decisive retail journey for our customers. Their rich expertise in automotive digitalization spans over a decade and we are looking forward to build together a transformative customer journey. The shift from multi-click, multi-page experience to a single seamless virtual interface, from 2D to 3D, is what excites us.”
Eccentric Engine reveals that their new virtual retailing cloud is an ecosystem and will need every ounce of intelligence, hardwork and creativity. Eccentric Engine plans to leverage millions of interactions it registers on its platform to obtain unique customer insights and build several use cases. Here is a sneak peek into their international roadmap with the Virtual Retail Cloud services:
- Put together the right standards that will help dealers/OEMs develop and maintain experiences such as Loading Time, Device Performance and Latency know-how.
- Develop and build an exclusive 3D warehouse for quick deployment, reducing OEM dependency
- Equip OEMs & Dealerships with capabilities to create virtual experiences. An example of this is a no-code platform for any website partner to develop journeys in virtual retailing.
- Robust back-end analytics through Eccentric Inc.’s comprehensive engine that will offer deep insights on buyer preferences.
- Actively syndicate learnings from deployments across dealerships & OEMs around the world
Jessie Dosanjh, President, California Automotive Retailing Group, owner of Dublin Cadillac stated, “We pride ourselves in being a progressive & trusted group. Cadillac is a luxury brand and we are excited to bring to our customers, premium digital shopping experiences through our new partner Eccentric Inc. Thanks to their capabilities, our buyers will be more confident about their purchase. We look forward to having virtual retailing capabilities on our website & within our store premises.”
By 2025 more than 100 million interactions will be powered by Eccentric Engine.
“The Virtual Retailing cloud ecosystem will be a game changer to empower buyers across the world. We are proud of our partnerships in USA, Japan, South Africa and Indonesia that is already enabling this” concluded Shah.
