From Rs 99 washes to insurance and resale: The Hoora story and the rise of Vehicle 360° servicesar

In a workshop in Nagpur, surrounded by a 200-member team and the hum of machines, Yashwant Budhwani is building something deceptively simple: trust in auto care.

At 26, he is the founder of Hoora, a startup that began as a Rs 99 doorstep car wash and has evolved into a Vehicle 360° platform – spanning car care, accessories, insurance, and resale.

Yashwant’s journey did not follow the typical campus-to-corporate route. As a teenager from a middle-class home, he gravitated towards the internet.

He freelanced, experimented, and eventually launched a YouTube channel called “Unbox Extinction” long before “creator economy” became a buzzword. In the pre-Jio era, the channel grew to over four lakh subscribers and attracted collaborations with major smartphone brands.

That early creator journey taught him three things: how brands think, how users respond, and how to ship content consistently. It was, in many ways, his first startup.

Not every venture worked. Yashwant went through failures – including an earlier business that left behind nothing but unused cleaning equipment. When COVID-19 upended life and mobility, he decided to try again with a smaller, sharper experiment: a Rs 99 doorstep car wash using electric two-wheelers and a homemade “backpack” cleaning system, all run out of a small garage-like room in Nagpur.

That experiment became Hoora – a name inspired by “Hurrah,” signalling freshness and joy. He partnered with co-founders Khaled (operations) and Harsh (tech), who both took on significant responsibility without the comfort of big salaries. Together, they built a model that could survive without venture funding: efficient, scrappy, and designed to learn from each new neighborhood.

Over time, the vision expanded. The car wash, once the core product, became a gateway. It helped build trust, collect data, and open the door to a broader proposition: one platform for everything a vehicle owner needs, from maintenance to add-ons to eventual resale.

Hoora’s story is not just about technology or logistics. It’s about a founder who used content, hardware tinkering, and field learning to build a brand in a sector still dominated by unorganised players and patchy service.

How far can a garage-born brand from Nagpur go in redefining auto care in India and beyond? What happens when Vehicle 360° meets the realities of insurance, resale markets, and OEM partnerships?

The full Hoora case study is part of The Indian Dream – 3rd Edition in the Consumer Service Tech section.

You can read the complete piece on IndianDream.club