In India, used car businesses see renewed interest from investors with CarDekho raising $110 million

• The Series C round was led by investors like Sequoia India, Hillhouse, Capital G, Axis Bank etc.
  
• The new round of funding takes CarDekho valuation to $500 million.
  
• The company will focus on expanding its used car business.

The slew of funding for Indian startups continues in 2019 with Jaipur-based CarDekho raising $110 million from marquee investors like Sequoia India, Hillhouse, CapitalG (the growth investment arm of Alphabet) and Axis Bank. The new round of funding takes CarDekho valuation to $500 million.

With funds in the bank now, Amit Jain, CEO and co-founder, said in a press statement that they will be using the funds to expand their used car business and infuse money into their insurance and finance verticals. “These segments have huge potential to scale up and we are completely focused on getting them to a massive scale,” he said.

CarDekho, launched in 2008, offers an e-commerce portal for new and used cars, while also offering services to compare prices between cars, view/write reviews, insurance etc. It claims to work directly with 8 automakers in India along with 5,000 dealer partnerships across the country.

It was reported in October 2018, that the GirnarSoft Pvt Ltd owned auto e-commerce portal had earlier recorded a 40 percent growth in revenue for the financial year closing on March 2018, while also reducing losses.

2018 looked like a busy year of investments for the company with GirnarSoft raising $3.6 million in debt funding from Trifecta and CarDekho scooping up $2.5 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital.

Used car business in India

The used car market in India has seen strong growth over the years. A report published by Mordor Intelligence states that the Indian used car market is slated to reach a market size of $75 billion by 2023, while also recording a CAGR of 15.2%

India has seen a surge in the number of startups operating in the area with the likes of CarDekho, Droom, CarWaale, Cars24 etc., many of which have raised funding in 2018, reflecting an increased interest from investors.

Interestingly, Cardekho’s investor Sequoia Capital also backed Cars24 in July 2018, when the latter raised $49.7 million.

Meanwhile, Sandeep Aggarwal-led Droom raised a series E round of funding of $30 million led by the Japanese family office of Joe Hirao.

See also:
Online marketplace OLX plans to open 150 ‘offline’ stores for buying and selling of used cars across India

For Indian startups, 2018 has been a year of bouncing back as venture capital funding doubles

The Indian government has reportedly invested just 19% of its fund dedicated to boosting startups