The Values That Will Shape The Next Chapter Of Cars24

Values are the principles that help us navigate difficult situations as individuals. They become the clearest compass when we are faced with hard decisions, uncertainty or tradeoffs.

The values below are a reflection of the new Cars24, who we are today and the kind of company we are trying to build through the work we do every single day.

Because the opportunity in front of us is the biggest this category has ever seen and we are the ones who get to build it. The only way to create 100x outcomes is to do what no one else is doing and to do it urgently every single day.

That is the alpha we are here for & that is the long game we are playing.

We are meritocratic in how we choose, compassionate in how we hold each other and honest about the fact that past laurels do not earn tomorrow’s seat.

These values are not posters. They are expectations & they start with me first.

1. Customer love

We exist for the people whose lives a car runs through. The car owner buying their first one or selling their third, the dealer running a business on our auctions, the borrower whose loan we underwrite. A car is not just a product. It sits in their biography. Seen and understood is the bar. Anything less is a failure of love.

The test: would you be comfortable if it were your own family sitting across that desk? If not, something is wrong.

2. Builder mindset

There is one role at Cars24, and that role is Builder. Being a Builder today means being AI-first and engineering-first. Builders don't wait to be told what to solve, they figure out the biggest problem and own it. They don't wait for permission either, because nobody is coming to give it. They grow by solving harder problems, and then harder ones after that.

Builders fail often, because nothing worth building comes without it. Not trying is the only failure that counts. We want people who can fail in public, take the scar, and try again. You don't have to be a founder to think like one. You just have to choose to.

The test: if the biggest problem you are working on doesn't give you some butterflies, it isn't big enough.

3. Seek truth

We say the hard thing in the room, even when it disappoints. We receive the hard thing the same way, even when it stings. We don't nod in the meeting and disagree on DM after, and we deliver bad news up the chain, not sideways. We think first principles, holding hypotheses rather than certainties, even when those hypotheses are unpopular, because comfort is where truth goes to die. Sometimes we change our minds.

Sometimes we hold the ground, even when people laugh, disagree, and make us doubt ourselves. Being right early always looks like being wrong.

The test: If it didn't hurt, you didn't take a hard call. If you walked out of a meeting and DMed someone what you really thought, the meeting failed and you failed it.

4. Whatever we tolerate becomes our culture

Low standards are the plague. We have tolerated slow. We have tolerated sloppy. We have tolerated the kind of politeness that protects feelings instead of the work. All of it has cost us. Every behaviour we tolerate becomes the policy we never wrote. We benchmark to best, not better, because better is the trap that keeps companies stuck. Attention to detail is the standard we have most often let slip. That ends now.

I am the first one accountable for what we have tolerated, and I am the first one accountable for raising the bar from here.

The test: When you spot something below standard, do you address it or adjust your standards to live with it? What you walk past today becomes culture tomorrow

5. Better humans

How we behave when it is hardest is who we actually are. The hardest moments are not the dramatic ones, they are the ones where we could quietly choose less. Less care for a customer who won't notice. Less honesty when a softer answer would be easier. Less effort for someone on their way out. CrashFree, the Compassion Fund, and how we let people go all come from refusing to choose less. We are not trying to be a virtuous company. We are trying to become better humans through work.

The test: Recall your past week, under pressure, did you treat fellow autonauts with dignity and respect?

Before I ask anyone to live by these values, I owe them by living them myself.

What I am committing to

I cannot ask you to be held to standards I am not held to myself. So I am naming mine.

I am accountable for the rise and the fall of Cars24. The wins are the team's. The misses are mine. Whatever happens, it is on me to figure it out, regardless of circumstances. What we tolerate becomes our culture, and I tolerated all of it. When we reset two years ago and didn't go far enough, I didn't go far enough either.

I will be measured on the same Builder standard everyone else is. I will be the first person to say the hard thing in the room and the first person to be told it. The day I stop being held to these values is the day I should stop running this company.

Vikram, builder