Bangalore: ZenKars, a startup by a young Indian American entrepreneur and his friend, which deals with the online retailing of used cars won the $30,000 Perlman Prize at the 2013 Wharton Business Plan Competition (BPC). The prize was awarded at the Wharton School’s 15th Annual Venture Finals on April 24, 2013 where student finalists received more than $115,000 in combined cash prizes and in-kind legal/accounting services.

ZenKars, which also received the Wharton BPC’s “Committee’s Choice Award,” is an online retailer of used cars targeting a $600 billion market. Jean-Mathieu (Jim) Chabas and Venkat Jonnala, co-founders and second year MBA students, have created an online model connecting used cars from corporate directly to consumers.  Their “peaceful buying experience” for the buyer offers competitive prices, detailed vehicle information, convenience and warrantees. 

The ZenKars co-founders met last summer on Facebook while looking for roommates in Philadelphia.  They eventually found themselves batting entrepreneurial ideas around and landed on what has become ZenKars which was soon accepted into the DreamIt Ventures accelerator, from whom they received additional seed funding.

Jonnala has previously worked with the Boston Consulting Group in Atlanta on growth strategy and sales improvement projects in the consumer and B2B retail industries. His projects in the automotive remarketing space, focused on aggressively growing online used car sales for a leading remarketing firm, received good response. He holds an undergraduate degree in Engineering from Georgia Tech and is currently an MBA student at Wharton.