Buying a car? Go online to experience the ride

Thinking of buying a car, but have little time to go to the showroom, increasing distances and long working hours? Here is the answer to your problems, go online.

Carazoo.com, a 3-D animation of the car allows you to rotate the car and see it from every angle, also lets you check out the interiors and overall look of the car through a user- controlled animation, giving the customer a virtual experience of the vehicle, just like an actual showroom.

The technology used is Indian and is being used in Europe and the US. Logix, a Banglore based firm, first introduced it abroad and has now brought it here.

The firm has 360-degree animations of almost 1400 cars launched globally from 2002 since they started working on this technology.

Each animation uses upto 40 photos taken by the firm's photographer who visits the showrooms every month. The animations are stored in a database with Logix, which provides it to the website for a price.

Carazoo, which has tie-ups with dealers in Banglore and Delhi, is in talks with 40-odd dealers in Mumbai

Car sales in India rose to 12 lakh in 2007-08 from 10.7 lakh previous year. The industry may further grow to 12 -13 per cent. Of this number, almost 12 -15 per cent research cars on the internet before buying the car.