From ₹20 Soup To ₹200 Cr Business: How Two Brothers Built AutoBest Emperio Into India’s Top Luxury Car Showroom

In a price-sensitive and self-esteem-driven market like India, where buying a pre-owned luxury car often attracts as much doubt as desire, AutoBest Emperio is steadily redefining perceptions with consistent transactions month after month.

Behind this transformation are brothers Avneet Singh Kohli (Sunny) and Jaspreet Singh Kohli (Hunny)—two entrepreneurs whose journey began far from the world of luxury showrooms lined with Porsches, Lamborghinis, and other premium marques. Their story is one of resilience, intent, and an unwavering belief in building something meaningful from the ground up.

Humble Beginnings That Shaped Perspective

Before AutoBest Emperio became synonymous with high-end pre-owned luxury cars, the brothers’ lives were defined by struggle and perseverance.

During one of the most difficult phases of their lives in the late 1990s, their father was critically ill, while the family’s financial stability had collapsed. There were days when the brothers stepped out with exactly ₹20 to buy a bowl of soup for their father, with nothing left for themselves.

Today, ₹20 may seem insignificant, but for them it remains a powerful reminder of where they started. More than financial boundaries, it was a shared journey filled with learnings, sacrifice, and an undeterred commitment to build something meaningful jointly.

“Those days taught us everything,” reminisces Sunny. “When you start from the ground, with negligible spending power, you value every step forward. We were driven by the thought of creating something of our own—but a larger pull factor was building something people could trust.”

The brothers grew up with one lesson deeply ingrained by their father: dream big, because without vision even hard work loses direction.

However, circumstances forced them to take a different path. By the time they completed their twelfth standard, pursuing higher education was no longer financially possible.

Entrepreneurship, therefore, became a necessity rather than a choice.

The First Entrepreneurial Leap

In 1999, the brothers took their first step into business with a deeply personal sacrifice. Their mother’s jewellery, worth ₹20,000, was sold to seed their first venture.

The modest capital was used to start a manufacturing business focused on electronic voltage stabilisers, a product in high demand at the time due to erratic electricity supply across India.

What followed was nearly a decade of relentless effort, during which the brothers built the business steadily from the ground up. Those early years gave them invaluable lessons about markets, customer expectations, and operational discipline, experiences that would later prove instrumental in shaping their entrepreneurial instincts.

Turning Passion into Profession

Through the tiring efforts to navigate the unusual struggles, Sunny and Hunny learned deeply about the approach they wanted to keep in the business. Long before shifting gears to founding AutoBest Emperio, the brothers immersed themselves in the world of automobiles, not as traders, but as learners. With the sea of knowledge and innate interest in cars, the duo was slowly gaining technical understanding that would later become their unshakable strength.

“It has always been a passion turned into a profession for us,” adds Hunny. “We’re not here just because it’s a family business. We genuinely love cars and understand them deeply. That’s where it all started.”

Identifying the Trust Deficit in Pre-Owned Luxury

Having understood that the footing for their business was in pre-owned cars, both Sunny and Hunny quickly learned that more than availability, the quest remained about the credibility that the available cars provided.

In India, the pre-owned luxury car segment has predominantly been looked down upon. With almost every dealer hiding realities pertaining to the vehicle history, condition, and authenticity, the scepticism kept deepening, leaving the market heavily unorganised for long. For aspirational buyers, the idea of owning a luxury car at a more accessible price point was attractive—but the fear of being misled kept them stalled from making a decision.

Sunny and Hunny saw through the market’s crisis as an opportunity in disguise.

“In this segment, people are not just buying a car—they’re buying assurance,” underscores Sunny. “And that assurance was missing. We knew if we could solve that, everything else would follow.”

Instead of focusing purely on sales, the brothers set out to solve the problem at the root. More than selling pre-owned luxury cars, the brothers dreamed of keeping every buyer’s ownership experience best-in-class and hassle-free.

Building a System That Customers Could Believe In

To regain the customers’ eroded trust in the pre-owned luxury car segment, AutoBest Emperio focused on creating a structured, transparent ecosystem - one that removed ambiguity at every step.

Every car entering their showroom is inspected thoroughly with a rigorous 150-point inspection, guaranteeing that the car’s quality, performance, safety, etc., meet uncompromising standards. Verifying history checks and providing complete service history with the consumer further ensures that the customer has complete clarity on the vehicle’s background - something that has traditionally been a grey area in the market.

“We wanted to eliminate doubt from the source,” voices Hunny. “When a customer walks in, they shouldn’t have to second-guess anything. The car, the paperwork, the experience – we ensure everything is spotless and just as they want it to be, i.e. transparent.”

Accelerating a little beyond inspection and verification, the brothers learned that trust was not a transactional business but a subject demanding investment of time. This led them to design a user journey exceeding the purchase.

From personalising financing solutions, translating into easily accessible luxury to providing a strong after-sales support, AutoBest Emporio has reshaped the customer’s ownership experience at every touchpoint.

“Our relationship with the customer doesn’t end when the car is sold,” Sunny emphasises. “Instead, it is just where the long-term relationship begins. If they trust us once, they should be able to trust us again.”

Scaling on the Foundation of Trust

What started as a purpose-driven venture has since grown steadily through organic demand.

Today, AutoBest Emperio recorded an annual turnover of ₹216 crore in the last financial year, offering over 250 exclusive car variants across 25+ luxury brands and serving a community of more than 8,000 satisfied clients.

Yet for the founders, numbers are simply the outcome of doing things the right way.

“We’ve never chased numbers,” says Hunny. “We’ve focused on credibility. When people trust you, growth follows naturally.”

Their growth has also coincided with a shift in consumer behaviour. Indian buyers today are more informed and aspirational, seeking both value and premium experiences.

The pre-owned luxury segment sits perfectly at this intersection, provided it delivers uncompromising trust and transparency, an area where AutoBest Emperio has carved its identity.

A Vision Rooted in Where It All Began

Despite the scale the business has achieved, Sunny and Hunny remain grounded in the memories of their early struggles.

Those formative years continue to shape their philosophy of consistency, discipline, and long-term thinking.

“When you’ve experienced that phase, you don’t look for shortcuts,” reflects Sunny. “You focus on doing the right things, consistently.”

Looking ahead, their ambition is clear. The company aims to scale its turnover to ₹500 crore within the next 24 months, with plans to explore a semi-IPO thereafter. Its long-term vision includes expanding across multiple verticals within the automotive ecosystem from new car retail to digital automotive platforms and potential manufacturing ventures.

And through it all, the memory of that ₹20 bowl of soup remains a quiet reminder of how far the journey has come.