PowerDrift
PowerDrift is an Indian automotive media platform known for its video reviews of cars and motorcycles, published on its YouTube channel and at powerdrift.com. It is listed in the WorldNM directory as a Pune-based outlet in Maharashtra publishing in English. PowerDrift was founded in 2012 by Rohan Albal and Amit Shetty, and it grew into what business reporting in 2018 described as India's largest YouTube channel for automotive content. In August 2018, PowerDrift Studios Private Limited was acquired by Girnar Software, the Jaipur-based company behind the auto portals CarDekho.com, Gaadi.com, ZigWheels.com and BikeDekho.com, for an undisclosed amount.
Founding in 2012
PowerDrift began in 2012, when online video was becoming the natural medium for car and bike reviews but Indian automotive publishing was still dominated by print magazines and television shows. Its founders, Rohan Albal and Amit Shetty, built the channel around filmed reviews that combined a working knowledge of cars and motorcycles with deliberate attention to filmmaking. Albal, who served as co-founder and chief executive, summarised the founding principle at the time of the acquisition: showcasing Indian motoring in a unique and world-class way had been the founding principle of PowerDrift.
The timing proved favourable. As smartphones and cheaper mobile data spread in India in the middle of the decade, video consumption grew rapidly, and vehicle buyers increasingly researched purchases online. Girnar Software's acquisition announcement cited a Google and Kantar TNS study stating that about 80 per cent of car buyers watch online video during their car-buying journey, which captures the market PowerDrift had positioned itself in from the start.
Growth of the Channel
By the time of its acquisition in August 2018, roughly five to six years after launch, PowerDrift had accumulated more than 240 million lifetime views on its YouTube channel, with an average of around 200,000 views per video, according to the companies' statements reported at the time. Reports described monthly viewing of more than 10 million views and a subscriber base of about 1.4 million, approaching the one-million milestone for an automotive channel and then passing beyond it; the combined Girnar group reach was put at 1.4 million subscribers. PowerDrift had done this, the reports noted, in about half the time and with about half the number of videos of conventional auto shows it had overtaken.
The channel also received industry recognition, including the Best Auto Content Creator, All India award at the Social Media Summit 2018, as reported in coverage of the acquisition. Such figures are the companies' own and date from 2018; they are best used as a record of the channel's scale at the point of acquisition rather than as current statistics.
Editorial Approach
PowerDrift's content is best described as reviews and motoring entertainment. Its programmes test and review new cars and motorcycles for the Indian market, present comparisons and features, and present motoring as a lifestyle subject as well as a consumer one. The acquisition coverage characterised the platform as specialising in unique lifestyle and engaging video content for consumers and enthusiasts of cars and motorcycles in India, and as having redefined how cars and bikes are tested, reviewed and showcased to viewers.
In practice, that meant cinematography and presentation were treated as part of the product: vehicles filmed on Indian roads in Indian conditions, presented in English for a national audience of buyers and enthusiasts. The directory description reflects this: an automotive digital media platform publishing car and bike news, reviews and videos.
Acquisition by Girnar Software
The acquisition, announced in August 2018, was Girnar Software's eighth acquisition across technology and content. Girnar, founded in 2007 by Amit Jain and Anurag Jain and headquartered in Jaipur, operated CarDekho.com and, through earlier acquisitions including Gaadi.com in 2014 and ZigWheels from Times Internet in September 2015, BikeDekho.com and other auto properties. The purchase was of PowerDrift Studios Private Limited, the company owning and operating the channel, for an undisclosed sum; some reports characterised the deal as having elements of an acquihire, bringing the PowerDrift team into the group.
Girnar stated that the deal made its group the largest automotive video content player in the country in subscriber terms, alongside what it described as the largest consumer-facing digital auto destination, with tens of millions of monthly visitors across group sites. Amit Jain, co-founder and chief executive of CarDekho, said at the time that content played an extremely important role in the group's user experience and that bringing PowerDrift on board would help produce best-in-class video content that would be both a visual treat and a decision-enabler for stakeholders. Albal responded that the alliance enabled PowerDrift to create more exciting content and offered greater value to viewers.
Strategic Logic of the Deal
The acquisition made sense for both sides and illustrates how Indian auto media consolidated in the 2010s. CarDekho's portals were strong in listings, prices, specifications and buying tools, the text-and-data side of car research, but video was where audience attention and brand advertising were moving. PowerDrift had the audience and the production skill but operated as an independent studio dependent on platform revenue and brand work. Inside Girnar, its content could support vehicle pages across CarDekho, BikeDekho, Gaadi and ZigWheels, while the group's advertiser relationships and resources could support larger productions.
For PowerDrift, the founders' public comments at the time stressed continuity of the creative mission rather than absorption: the alliance was presented as a way to make more ambitious content for the same audience of Indian car and bike enthusiasts.
Competition and Market Context
At the time of the acquisition, other players identified in the automotive YouTube space in India included Autocar India, Overdrive, Autoportal and the Car and Bike Show associated with NDTV. The established names were largely digital extensions of print magazines or television, whereas PowerDrift was digital-native, founded directly on YouTube. Its reported ability to outgrow those legacy brands in views with fewer videos was the central fact of its market position in 2018.
That digital-native origin also explains the brand's tone. Where magazine-derived channels tended to reproduce the format of a television road test, PowerDrift built programmes for an online audience that arrived through search and recommendations and expected entertainment value alongside specifications and verdicts.
The Website and Present Form
Alongside the channel, PowerDrift operates powerdrift.com, through which its car and bike news, reviews and features are published in web form. The WorldNM listing records PowerDrift as a Pune-based automotive digital media platform publishing in English, covering car and bike news, reviews and videos. The brand thus functions in two complementary formats: long-form video as the flagship, and a website that organises its automotive coverage for readers and searchers.
Within the Girnar group, PowerDrift is the specialist video brand among a set of portals that divide the car-buying journey between them: listings and prices on CarDekho and Gaadi, editorial and news on ZigWheels, two-wheelers on BikeDekho, and filmed reviews and features under PowerDrift.
Significance
PowerDrift's history is a compact example of the changing economics of Indian specialist media. A two-founder video studio, launched in 2012 without a print or television legacy, built an audience measured in hundreds of millions of views within six years and was acquired by one of India's largest auto portal groups as its principal video asset. Its story also marks the point at which online video became central to how Indians research vehicles, a shift the acquirer itself quantified with the finding that most car buyers watch online video while buying.
For directory purposes, PowerDrift should be classified as an automotive news and reviews outlet: English-language, based in Pune, Maharashtra, founded in 2012 by Rohan Albal and Amit Shetty, and owned since August 2018 by Girnar Software, the parent of CarDekho. Its primary subjects are new cars and motorcycles in the Indian market, covered through filmed reviews, features and supporting web coverage.
