Pakwheels.com was founded eleven years ago by Hanif Bhatti as an initiative to reach out to car aficionados in Pakistan. Initially it was merely an informative website with a classified section, but after popular demand the forums were added and the popularity of the website simply exploded.

With the growing workload getting too much to handle for a bunch of enthusiasts and part timers, Mr. Bhatti made the difficult decision to sell. According to him the website’s popularity meant that the site was starting to consume his entire life, and he found the right buyers at the right time. Confiz Limited, an IT company with the required resources, expressed an interest in acquiring Pakwheels, and the website was sold to them. In the hands of a professional group, the site became more organised and polished. It added paid staff to the erstwhile unpaid moderators and started a daily blog about everything automotive.

Today, with over 300,000 registered members, over 100,000 Facebook fans and 24 million website hits a year, Pakwheels is one of the biggest websites of Pakistan. It boasts a core of very close knit members who form a community that transcends race, ethnicity and religion. I have often travelled with them on various trips across Sindh and Balochistan and the camaraderie and humour I have observed between people who have previously only interacted online continues to amaze me.

Confiz Ltd acquired the website in 2007 and has worked hard to monetise the website. I spoke to the COO of Confiz, Ahmad Saeed, and he explained that they have several models for revenue generation, the three main ones are:

1. Google Adsense
2. Advertisements from brands (mainly Telcos)
3. Featured ads in the classified sections

The classified section of the website deserves special mention; Pakwheels has free classified ads. For featured ads, they charge 700 rupees. This gives the poster the option to have the ad placed on top of the search listings and is visible on the used cars landing page.

The company has very high hopes for the website, and according to Saeed, as web penetration within the country increases and the move towards a web-based economy beckons, Pakwheels “is ready to answer every automotive need of every Pakistani”.

He further stated that he wants Pakwheels to be the first resource anyone thinks about when they talk about cars, bikes or any vehicle. According to statistics provided by the team at Pakwheels, there were close to 500,000 unique ads posted last year. And every day, between a hundred to a hundred and fifty cars are sold through the website.

When an individual wants to buy or sell a vehicle or automotive accessory, according to Saeed, Pakwheels plans to be the largest and most reliable marketplace for them. A place where information is trustworthy and transactions are safe. He went on to add that they also want to engage the consumers a step before the buying process, and provide them with unbiased and authentic research data about cars, bikes and other automotive needs. This includes price, specifications, user reviews and comparisons to ensure that the consumer understands the choices before making a decision.

Surprisingly, the most traffic Pakwheels generates is not from Karachi, but comes from the automotive crazy city of Lahore. Ranked second is Karachi, followed by Islamabad and then a whole host of cities including Quetta, Peshawar and Faisalabad.

I inquired about the their future plans and without going into details, Ahmed Saeed mentioned vehicle registration and tax payments solutions, car financing and vehicle certification to be some of the services that Pakwheels plans to roll out soon.

For a website, hits (and unique ones, especially) are the be all and end all. I asked Saeed how Pakwheels aimed to improve brand recognition and their user base. He told me that Pakwheels was in the process of organising auto shows in major cities, namely Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. Next year they are planning to organise even more events such as Go Karting and cross-country rallies to further raise brand recognition amongst automotive enthusiasts.

The plan is also to spend more on digital marketing, which helps bring in the right audience – people searching for cars on internet. As the Pakistani internet population grows, Pakwheels plans to grow accordingly. This year there are also plans afoot to launch major radio and offline marketing campaigns, and perhaps even a print magazine.

Being a friend of several users of Pakwheels who call themselves “Pakwheelers”, I asked them about their opinion of Pakwheels. The almost unanimous answer I received was that as users they felt a strong sense of community, that people would go out of their way to help them because of a shared interest. But at the same time they felt very strongly about a lack of professionalism in the forums. Serious discussions are, in their opinion, not encouraged, and digressions are tolerated by the forum moderators. This tends to weaken the whole purpose of asking questions in the forum.

Pakwheels has a unique first mover advantage and must utilise this to become a giant of the Pakistani web scene. The team involved needs to clarify and broaden its vision, and needs to come up with some game changing ideas. It needs to sort out the complaints of its core group of users, and at the same time needs to entice more users.

One initiative worth mentioning here is the Pakwheels and the Pakwheels Forums apps in the Android and iPhone markets. They can tap into a burgeoning new user base in this way and can reach out to a whole new demographic. With the right strategic partnerships and the right blend of initiative and expertise, Pakwheels stands to become a shining example of how a small start-up can go on to become a major player.