Six years ago, Astara – which was then called Bergé Auto – had a turnover of 1,500 million euros, which by the end of 2023 will have quadrupled. In the same period, its international presence has gone from 6 to 19 countries in which it represents thirty automotive brands. But the most important thing -says its CEO, Jorge Navea- is that "six years ago we were unaware of the needs of our clients, recipients of the vehicles sold by our network, while today we have a technological platform that provides us, at the same time than dealer networks, valuable information on hundreds of thousands of end users and their preferences”.
The premise is an inevitable change in the business model, which requires a parallel technological change. The automotive market has been revolutionized in a few years: electric cars (13% in Spain), connected, shared, pay-per-use or subscription cars. Dealers, at least many of them, try to adapt to the new demand formats. That they are not necessarily contradictory –says Navea– because they have a common substrate, digitization.
“We were among the first to understand that what began with electrification would bring a trail of phenomena to which the existing distribution would have to join sooner or later. It is not that we wanted to change the model, but that we were obliged to change it”. The impetus came (only in part) from the industry, but above all from the end customer, another generation of mobility users. It is no longer enough to give brand, model and color options: the variables are so many that they transform the market.
This is how the idea arose for the Astara business – which gathered more than forty years of experience from the Bergé logistics group – to build its own technological platform, which its CEO defines as B2B-B2C (business to business-business to consumer). On the one hand, it helps attract customers to dealerships, an initiative that is obviously well received by brands; on the other, it explores other consumer mobilities. “We decided to do it ourselves and make the platform available to other market players. Until now, the industry has thought a lot about the product and little about the customer; Astara has chosen to use technology to understand how people are going to move and give an answer that is both intelligent and sustainable.
Astara's technological platform – it is impressive to navigate through its different components – has been developed in collaboration with Salesforce, the world's leading specialist in customer management software. “Our brands and their network of dealers are connected in real time: we can know at any moment where – and, where appropriate, on which ship and at what point on the route – each vehicle dispatched by the manufacturer is located and on what date it could delivered to the end customer. The current automation of the platform is 86%, but if we have not reached 100% it is due to our recent expansion into markets such as the Philippines and Poland.”
He points out that the confluence of Astara with Salesforce has been providential (although the platform incorporates some SAP functions in the back office). And it continues to be, because the American multinational has chosen it as a reference commercial offer for the automotive industry throughout the world.
The news does not end there. Astara has recently acquired the company GoTo, specialized in car sharing. And, apart from the conversation with Navea, it has been published that the company is contemplating an IPO, which could take place in 2024.
