How did Team-BHP become India's biggest car forum?

If you have ever searched "Hyundai Creta ownership review" or "Mahindra Thar long term issues" before buying, a Team-BHP thread has probably turned up first. The forum did not start as a business. It started as a tiny group of car enthusiasts swapping notes on MSN Communities, long before anyone called it Team-BHP.

From a dozen enthusiasts on MSN to an independent forum

Rush Parekh, who goes by the handle GTO on the forum, was part of that early MSN group. FactorDaily's 2017 profile of the site describes it as "a proto-community of around a dozen enthusiasts" who gathered on MSN Communities, drawn together by their distrust of mainstream car magazines. Parekh told The News Minute in 2015 that "car magazines are acknowledged as the most corrupt form of media anywhere in the world," pointing to how dependent they were on advertising from the same manufacturers they reviewed. That small group outgrew MSN and was registered as the independent Team-BHP.com in 2004.

The idea was simple. Let owners write about their own cars, good and bad, and let that pool of real-world ownership reports become the reference enthusiasts actually trust. No staff writers, no press cars borrowed on a manufacturer's terms. When one manufacturer stopped lending test vehicles after Team-BHP published unflattering coverage, members lent their own cars instead, and the forum kept publishing its follow-up reviews, according to The News Minute.

Why the forum still refuses car company advertising

Parekh funded Team-BHP out of his own pocket for the first seven years, using income from an education business he ran separately, FactorDaily reported. Since 2011, the forum has paid its bills through non-car Google AdSense ads and affiliate tie-ups such as insurance referrals, while keeping its founding rule intact: no advertising from automotive companies.

That rule is part of why the forum grew the way it did. The News Minute reported in 2015 that Team-BHP had crossed over 20 lakh unique monthly visitors. By April 2017, FactorDaily put the figure at 24 lakh unique monthly visitors and over two crore unique visitors a year, with close to 750 people logged in at any moment and 2,500 to 3,000 membership applications arriving every month.

What the CARS24 investment changes for members

On 23 April 2025, used car platform CARS24 announced it had taken a stake in Team-BHP, Inc42 reported. By then the forum had logged 4.5 million posts and over 20 million annual visitors. CARS24 said the deal would strengthen Team-BHP's product, tech stack and AI capabilities, though it did not disclose financial terms.

Parekh's statement on the deal stressed continuity over change. "With CARS24 backing us, and their technology and data layered into our platform, we can now build with more scale, more depth, and more intent," he said, according to Inc42. He added that the goal was sharper tools for owners without losing the independence and integrity that brought the community together in the first place.

CARS24 confirmed that Team-BHP would keep operating independently, run by its founding team. As of late 2026, the forum still carries no automotive advertising and still enforces that rule through its own moderators. For Indian owners, that history is the reason a Team-BHP ownership review still carries more weight than most press launches.

Sources

• What makes Team-BHP the boss of Indian online communities, even though web forums are dying?
• Born out of love for cars and hate for the 'corrupt' automotive media, meet Team-BHP
• CARS24 Acquires Automotive Forum Team-BHP