Meet Rytis Kričenas, the founder of Baltic Arrow, a car exchange platform launched a few weeks ago and funded by Nextury Ventures with Linas Kleiza. Rytis reveals he approached his future investors with his idea only in the middle of this summer, and so the investment, let alone the launch, were fast as lightning. Let’s hear more from Rytis.

Hi there. So please introduce the idea behind Baltic Arrow – when and how did you come up with this idea, what problems does it solve?

Rytis: Baltic Arrow is a car exchange platform. Basically, you never know when you will need a car different from your own. Sometimes you need some extra space and maneuverability when going to lake resort or at off-road places. Of course, you can rent a car for these occasions, but I personally found this solution to be complicated – many papers to fill, big expenses, etc. However, there are many cars and drivers around that own a car of your interest, but don’t need it at some point. So why not exchanging the car for a while for some earnings?

We have three major audience segments foreseen: new/luxury car owners, practical users and car lovers. New and luxury car owners might want to try our new cars, ideally from people they know or trust – we have them on our platform. The practical users, as I already mentioned, might need a larger car at some point for leisure or moving. However, I believe car lovers are the largest group. They just love cars, they are interested to ride different cars and our platform already has hundreds of them.

Of course, we just launched our initial product and we’re yet to see with concept works best. Obviously, we’re open to various partnership opportunities.

Some initial critics suggested that the ‘points’ users will earn/spend while exchanging cars are of limited liquidity. Why real money hasn’t been chosen?

Rytis: Real money hasn’t been chosen, because currently the service in our platform is free in order to invite more users and to have more exchanges taking place. Points are chosen as an tool to make exchanges fair, because of different values of cars. The higher the value difference between the cars, the more points will be needed to make an exchange or earned.

However, points will become real money in the future. We are thinking of commercialization of the business, perhaps a commission fee will be involved. But now users, a platform and car exchanges is what we need and our customers don’t need money to give our platform a try.

Your biggest challenges so far and how did you overcome them?

Rytis: It took us just three months from an idea to the current product. I actually met Ilja Laurs from Nextury ventures this summer, then I presented him my idea, he instantly gave me a go and an investment followed soon. Later, Linas Kleiza joined as an investor. And so I quickly found a small team and we launched in the beginning of October. That was really fast!

What’s next then?

Rytis: First we want to improve our product so it’s fully in line with Lithuania’s customers expectations. The platform is very new and launched very quickly, so there are many things to improve, much feedback to hear. Then, we’ll look for extra funding to expand into American and European markets.