A San Fernando Valley entrepreneur can add a new ingredient to the car-buying process: anonymity. Yes, you can make an offer on a new car without revealing your name, phone number or email address. Raj Joshi, the founder of DealerPinch, in Sherman Oaks, said the anonymous process benefits both the consumer and car dealerships. For the former it becomes an easier experience that eliminates haggling over price and the worry of getting phone calls from multiple car dealers looking to sell a car. “(The dealers) are able to move their inventory a lot quicker and it makes the process a lot more efficient,” Joshi said. With DealerPinch, consumers go to the website and specify the car they want by make, model, color and accessories, as well as down payment and monthly payment amounts. Users also select whether they want to buy or lease the vehicle, and they give the website their contact information. The consumer’s auto preferences are sent to the desk managers at four dealerships who can accept the offer, reject it or make a counteroffer. The site went fully active earlier this year, and it handles new cars for the 2016 and 2017 vehicle years. While other car-buying sites, such as Cars.com or TrueCar in West Los Angeles, have some elements of what DealerPinch offers, they are more interested in getting the consumer’s name and phone number and selling that data to multiple dealerships, Joshi said. The average person spends about 24 hours in a car shopping experience; with DealerPinch that shrinks to 14 minutes at the website and another 44 minutes at a dealership finalizing the deal and driving off in a new car, he added. “It is a big game changer,” Joshi said. DealerPinch operates on a bifurcated revenue model. It charges the consumer $99 if a deal gets made, and the dealership $200 for each deal completed. The company has facilitated up to 120 deals and has averaged about 20 a month the past few months, Joshi said. Thirty-five dealers in Los Angeles currently participate in the program, and Joshi is working to expand throughout Southern California. The idea for DealerPinch came to Joshi about three years ago when his mother was buying a new car. Both kept getting different price quotes and downpayment requirements from dealers. Joshi believed he could resolve the discrepancies with the anonymity supplied by the app. For a year Joshi worked at the Keyes European Mercedes Benz dealership in Van Nuys where he learned about selling cars – and what makes a dealership take a deal. “That has shaped how we do our business,” he said. “We want it to be a win-win for the buyer and the dealership.” – Mark R. Madler