For Beepi president Owen Savir, working with some of the more traditional players in the automotive industry can be a mutually beneficial strategy.

And in the online car-buying startup’s young history, it has already made moves in that direction.

Ally Financial announced last month that it would be offering consumer auto financing products for vehicles purchased on Beepi, providing its financing products to Beepi customers on nearly all makes and models. It was also reported last week by Fortune that Chinese automaker SAIC Motor Corp. led Beepi’s latest round of funding.

Interestingly enough, on the same day that Ally announced the deal with Beepi, fellow startup Vroom purchased independent dealership Texas Direct Auto.

Vroom had previously announced it would be providing services to dealers in November, and its $19 million Series A equity funding round included well-known folks with automotive ties: Steve Berrard, the former president of AutoNation and Blockbuster, as well as former football player John Elway, who has also made a name for himself investing in car dealerships. Not to mention, companies like Cox Automotive, AutoNation and General Motors are trying out models themselves that take a different spin on car-buying. 

In a phone interview this week, we asked Savir of Beepi what he sees as some of the benefits to working with traditional auto industry players at his company.

“It’s a very interesting thing that we’re seeing, where these established companies now turn to start-ups like Beepi in order to invest and fund the next big thing,” he said. “For us, it’s definitely very valuable. Having a partner like Ally that can help us finance all the Beepi buyers, who can help us understand how to do it better; having a partner like SAIC, with years of experience in the business, with the kind of exposure that they have, with the kind of connections that they have is helpful to us.

“And, of course, from the other side, them partnering with us is also beneficial to them, with the new kind of customers that they’re getting, with the market segment that’s continuously increasing, everybody wins in the end,” Savir continued.

So, for startups and more established auto industry companies alike, perhaps this is the beginning to a new way of doing business.

There certainly have been similar changes in the way people shop for cars, something that Savir alludes to when asked about the progress his company has made in the iOS app it announced in December.

The app, launched Dec. 10, lets shoppers buy cars completely through an iPhone. The response to it has “surprised us,” Savir said. Although most still use their PC or laptop computer to actually buy the car via Beepi, usage of the app is growing rapidly, and consumers were ready to use it from the get-go, Savir said.

“When we first launched the app, we kind of thought about it as a discovery channel. In our minds, people were going to use the app to browse cars and find something that they like, and then finalize the transaction via their desktop or laptop computer. Because we said that we found it hard to think that someone would spend $50,000 or $100,000 online to buy a car over their iPhone. And in reality, the day that we launched the app, we already had buyers who were using the app to buy cars,” he said.

“What’s interesting is, to see that … people do it, and actually do it pretty quickly. So, I’m sure you know the research that says people on average, spend about 18 hours researching and negotiating before buying a car,” Savir continued. “And right now we see that the average buyer, the average app buyer, spends around 29 minutes while browsing and buying a car.

“This is exactly the big difference that we keep talking about between the old way of doing things and the new way of doing things, where you buy a car like you buy a pair of shoes on Zappos. And you have that peace-of-mind that if things don’t go as you wanted them, if the car isn’t to your liking, you can always send it back. And the experience is great,” he said.  “And so that’s really the new way of doing things.”