India’s Cars24, an Indian startup that sells used cars and motorbikes has raised $400 million – $300 million in equity and $100 million in debt in a Series G funding round. The funding round follows three months after the company closed its last round at $450 million, $340 in Series F and $110 million in debt. The latest funding round brings Cars24’s valuation to $3.3 billion from $1.84 billion just three months ago.
The Series G funding round was led by Alpha Wave Global and saw the participation of other existing investors which Cars24 is leaving us in the dark about. Although the participants in the round apart from the lead investor were not mentioned, the company’s backers include DST Global, Alibaba, Tencent, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Exor Seeds, Raptor Group, Moore Strategic Ventures and about 20 others.
Cars24 says it has 90 percent of the country’s used car market and technology has been what it has been leveraging on. Its wide inventory is one of its biggest selling points as well as its search engine that enables people to find vehicles. Cars24 also provides vehicle financing. It also has built analytics to measure demand and calibrate pricing and make online assessments of vehicles. Cars24 currently has some 13 million monthly visitors to its site and has sold over 400,000 vehicles (both cars and motorbikes) to date.
With the new funding, Cars24 will work on increasing its customer base and staying in front of the competition and will be putting everything in place to ensure that its existing users do not leave its brand. As a way of achieving this, the company will widen its vehicle financing options and add more centres for servicing vehicles.
Gajendra Jangid, Cars24’s CMO, who co-founded the company with Vikram Chopra, Mehul Agrawal and Ruchit Agarwal in Gurugram in 2015 said that “the primary use of the funding will be to continue to strengthen our presence in India, and in the countries where we have expanded”. The company will also be pushing for strengthening its presence in Southeast Asia. Cars24 is active in 200 cities in India and claims to have grown 50% in the last quarter.
Speaking on the investment Navroz D. Udwadia, co-founder and partner of Alpha Wave, in a statement said that “We are excited to back Cars24 yet again as they continue to cement their leadership positions across India, UAE, Australia and other international markets. Cars24’s robust competitive moats across in-house reconditioning, access to the widest assortment/supply and deep data science drive a delightful customer experience and reflects in its best-in-class NPS. We believe this investment will help Cars24 fortify its moats even further and scale 10x from here over the next few years. We remain impressed by the team’s vision and execution, and are delighted to deepen our partnership with Cars24.”
