When Monik Pamecha co-founded AI voice startup Toma in early 2024, he hadnt anticipated costs the summer months sweating in Bible Belt vehicle dealerships.
He and co-founder Anthony Krivonos were still focused on banking and healthcare consumers when the dealerships came knocking.They just called us up and stated we are drowning in telephone call, Pamecha described that preliminary contact in an interview with A Technology NewsRoom.Seeing a chance to pivot into a far less-regulated space than banking or healthcare, Pamecha and Krivonos established a test: They chose to have their voice agent call essentially every vehicle dealership in the country numerous times.
Over the span of a few weeks they found those calls were just gotten 45% of the time.The co-founders packed their bags.
And like some sort of contemporary reinterpretation of the film Tommy Boy, they set out to visit a dozen automobile dealers in Oklahoma and Mississippi to get a better understanding of how these services work.
They got their hands filthy both figuratively and literally; Pamecha said his spouse was shocked by the grease discolorations on his clothing when he returned home.That dedication settled.
Not just did they win clients, they got the dealerships complete beauty offensive.
The founders shared home-cooked meals an in some cases awkward-but-funny affair given Pamechas vegetarianism, he said and were invited to visit the Corvette Museum.
At least one dealership even asked the Toma founders to tag along to a shooting range.Seema Amble, a partner at a16z who led the $17 million that Toma has actually raised to date, stated the set were efficiently living at these dealers, going to these dealerships household barbecues, truly comprehending how they operate.We buy a great deal of the next-generation of vertical AI companies, a great deal of the best creators have just lived and breathed with these consumers to comprehend whats going on under the hood, she told A Technology NewsRoom.
No pun intended.The insights from that trip helped Pamecha and Krivonos sharpen the Toma voice representative into a tool that is already in usage at more than 100 car dealerships around the nation.
The AI assists clients schedule service appointments, deal with parts orders, answer sales concerns, and more.Along with a16z, Pamecha and Krivonos attracted financial investment from Y Combinator (they produced Toma at YC in January 2024), the Scale Angels Fund, and vehicle market influencer Yossi Levi, likewise called the Car Dealership Guy.Levi told A Technology NewsRoom that dealers struggle with call in part due to the fact that its tough to predict volume.It ups and downs.
Sometimes youre overwhelmed with need.
Other times theres not enough demand, and matching staffing and effectively training that personnel for a consistent experience is simply not an easy thing to do, Levi stated.
AI has offered a chance for dealerships to actually standardize that procedure, and deliver a richer consumer experience that is consistent.Pamecha stated Tomas onboarding procedure involves training on a dealerships consumer calls for a week or two to give the AI some context.
This is very important since while dealers broadly do the very same things, there can be a lot of difference in the details.
Some dealers may service more diesel engines.
Dealerships also run lots of customized promos for both sales and service.After that initial burst of training, the Toma AI starts taking calls, handing off to human employees if and when it gets baffled.
Those handoff calls get evaluated, too, in order to enhance the AI design to much better help that specific dealership.
On the business side, Toma operates a subscription model.
As the AI representatives can deal with more parts of a car dealerships operations, those dealerships will have to pay up for those extra capabilities.The Series A comes at a good time for Toma, according to Pamecha.
The start-up just hired its very first real sales employee within the last few weeks.
Before that, it was still mainly Pamecha and Krivonos hustling like they did across the nation last summer.Without that journey, though, Pamecha said hes not exactly sure Toma would have reached this point.It has actually been among the best experiences of my life, he said.
I seem like weve all become buddies, and I think everything comes from a location of like, feeling their discomfort.
I think they see that we feel the discomfort, too.