Another Unicorn in Making: CarDekho plans $150 Mn Series E Fundraise - Report

Girnar's Auto Portal CarDekho is in talks to raise a minimum of $150 million, reports suggest. The fundraiser would take the company to unicorn status, making it the 15th startup in the billion-dollar club in 2021. Further, the company aims to use the resources to expand its e-commerce platform for retailing used cars. The startup currently values at $725 Mn after its Series D raise of $70 Mn.

About CarDekho

CarDekho, which went live in 2008, was set up by a bunch of young, enthusiastic IIT graduates. Its investors include Google Capital, Tybourne Capital, Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital, HDFC Bank, Ratan Tata and Times Internet.

The Indian used car market is around 1.5 times of new car sales. Industry executives expect old car sales to increase in volume after the pandemic. Automakers and startups are eyeing a share of this unorganized market. CarDekho is entering the organized used car business amid rising competition from other startups. One of its biggest competitors, Cars 24 has already made significant inroads in metro cities. Further, automakers, too, have been ramping up their infrastructure for used-vehicle sales; to improve revenues and generate new vehicle sales.

CarDekho revamping its senior management

Recently, CarDekho has been working on the product front. It also hired five VPs to lead its engineering, technology, and product development teams. CarDekho appointed ex-Walmart executive Sandeep Singh and ex-Reliance Jio VP of engineering Mayank Kapoor as vice presidents of engineering and Manjeet Dahiya, who was earlier leading ML and data science at Airtel’s WYNK joined the company as VP of artificial intelligence, machine learning and data sciences.

Plans of the company

In March 2021, CarDekho had launched UPLINK, an advanced and compact GPS Vehicle Tracking System. The compact plug-and-play device will connect vehicles to allow users to gain real-time access to a host of information like as live tracking, rash driving alerts, trips history, usage stats, etc.

In 2019, the startup had announced that it will open 250 stores in India which it has postponed. In an interaction with Mint, CarDekho said that it plans to launch larger format stores in select metro and non-metro cities. “Bigger stores will give us economies of scale and more leverage on manpower efficiency. We will go with the top three-four cities and try different formats,” CEO Amit Jain said.