How this Indian CEO is saving 50% time with AI use
CEO of one of India’s biggest used car start-ups is reimagining the whole company around AI.
- Sep 25, 2026,
- Updated Sep 25, 2026 11:58 AM IST
The Gurugram office of used-car start-up Cars24 is buzzing on a late Friday evening as I arrive to meet the co-founder and CEO Vikram Chopra.
After heading to the conference room for a chat, Chopra pulls out his artificial intelligence (AI) note-taking device and places it on the table.
“I record all my conversations,” Chopra tells Business Today in an interview. “I have a second brain now. All my emails, WhatsApp, Slack, LinkedIn, and podcasts conversations go into this brain,” he says.
Thanks to OpenAI’s Codex and Claude Code, Chopra says he has 50% more free time now. “What am I doing on my own computer that my agent can’t do it for me?” he asks.
But all this takes time.
“Building an agent takes time. It will give bad answers initially or hallucinate. It needs memory or context,” says Chopra. Voice recordings are for context.
The CEO of one of India’s biggest used car startups is reimagining the whole company around AI.
An average customer takes as much as three months to buy a used car, according to Chopra.
“For three months, you can’t have a relationship manager for that customer. Your unit economics won’t allow it,” says Chopra, adding that this job has been taken by AI. “Every customer now gets a virtual assistant which can talk on the phone,” he says.
Chopra, however, says a key challenge in the used-car business remains the need for human judgement to accurately assess a vehicle’s condition.
As a serial entrepreneur, Chopra founded online furniture retailer FabFurnish before co-founding Cars24. He has now launched a new AI venture, Deployment Inc, focused on AI consulting.
“We have invested Rs 50 crore in Deployment Inc. We plan to hire 50 employees. They will basically go and help clients become AI-native,” says Chopra.
The used car platform is already spending Rs 5 crore on AI token usage each month. “I intend to increase it further,” says Chopra.
Cars24, which shut down its used two-wheeler business due to smaller ticket size and limited bandwidth, is now planning to restart it. “We will restart used two-wheeler business, thanks to AI,” confirms Chopra.
The Cars24 CEO has also figured out new ways to connect with employees using AI.
“Earlier, if my employee asked me for a salary hike, I would ask HR to get the details of pervious increment. Now I ask the agent,” says Chopra.
Cars24 even delayed its initial public offering (IPO) plans as Chopra pushed the company to deepen its use of AI.
“Earlier, we were planning an IPO this year itself but then in December an Opus (Claude) model came that blew my mind and was the first sign to me that AI has transitioned from a cool tool to something very functional,” he says. “I decided that if I don’t crack AI, nothing else will matter in the long term.”
“When a technology that is this tectonic is happening while we are in the prime of our lives, we want to be part of it. We have been waiting for this big wave forever, and now it has come. We want to ride that wave,” explains Chopra.
It’s no wonder that Chopra is doing 50% more work with the time he has managed to save. Two of his co-founders, Mehul Agrawal and Gajendra Jangid, stepped down from their roles of chief operating officer (COO) and chief marketing officer (CMO) earlier this year.
On recent exits of two co-founders, Chopra says, “It’s like you start hiking on a mountain together, then somebody says they want to go right, and someone says they want to go left.”
Only time will tell if the path taken by Chopra leads to the summit he has spent years climbing toward or leaves him navigating a very different mountain altogether.
The Gurugram office of used-car start-up Cars24 is buzzing on a late Friday evening as I arrive to meet the co-founder and CEO Vikram Chopra.
After heading to the conference room for a chat, Chopra pulls out his artificial intelligence (AI) note-taking device and places it on the table.
“I record all my conversations,” Chopra tells Business Today in an interview. “I have a second brain now. All my emails, WhatsApp, Slack, LinkedIn, and podcasts conversations go into this brain,” he says.
Thanks to OpenAI’s Codex and Claude Code, Chopra says he has 50% more free time now. “What am I doing on my own computer that my agent can’t do it for me?” he asks.
But all this takes time.
“Building an agent takes time. It will give bad answers initially or hallucinate. It needs memory or context,” says Chopra. Voice recordings are for context.
The CEO of one of India’s biggest used car startups is reimagining the whole company around AI.
An average customer takes as much as three months to buy a used car, according to Chopra.
“For three months, you can’t have a relationship manager for that customer. Your unit economics won’t allow it,” says Chopra, adding that this job has been taken by AI. “Every customer now gets a virtual assistant which can talk on the phone,” he says.
Chopra, however, says a key challenge in the used-car business remains the need for human judgement to accurately assess a vehicle’s condition.
As a serial entrepreneur, Chopra founded online furniture retailer FabFurnish before co-founding Cars24. He has now launched a new AI venture, Deployment Inc, focused on AI consulting.
“We have invested Rs 50 crore in Deployment Inc. We plan to hire 50 employees. They will basically go and help clients become AI-native,” says Chopra.
The used car platform is already spending Rs 5 crore on AI token usage each month. “I intend to increase it further,” says Chopra.
Cars24, which shut down its used two-wheeler business due to smaller ticket size and limited bandwidth, is now planning to restart it. “We will restart used two-wheeler business, thanks to AI,” confirms Chopra.
The Cars24 CEO has also figured out new ways to connect with employees using AI.
“Earlier, if my employee asked me for a salary hike, I would ask HR to get the details of pervious increment. Now I ask the agent,” says Chopra.
Cars24 even delayed its initial public offering (IPO) plans as Chopra pushed the company to deepen its use of AI.
“Earlier, we were planning an IPO this year itself but then in December an Opus (Claude) model came that blew my mind and was the first sign to me that AI has transitioned from a cool tool to something very functional,” he says. “I decided that if I don’t crack AI, nothing else will matter in the long term.”
“When a technology that is this tectonic is happening while we are in the prime of our lives, we want to be part of it. We have been waiting for this big wave forever, and now it has come. We want to ride that wave,” explains Chopra.
It’s no wonder that Chopra is doing 50% more work with the time he has managed to save. Two of his co-founders, Mehul Agrawal and Gajendra Jangid, stepped down from their roles of chief operating officer (COO) and chief marketing officer (CMO) earlier this year.
On recent exits of two co-founders, Chopra says, “It’s like you start hiking on a mountain together, then somebody says they want to go right, and someone says they want to go left.”
Only time will tell if the path taken by Chopra leads to the summit he has spent years climbing toward or leaves him navigating a very different mountain altogether.