Asia Partners leads $30m Series D for Malaysia's Carsome

Existing investors Burda Principal Investments and Ondine Capital also participated. It follows a $50 million Series C late last year that included Ondine, Covergence Ventures, Daiwa PI Partners, Endeavor Catalyst, Gobi Partners, and MUFG Innovation Partners.

Carsome has described the Series D as its largest equity investment to date. The fresh capital will be used to strengthen an existing regional C2B e-commerce business and accelerate a new offering in the B2C segment. The plan is to create Southeast Asia’s first C2B and B2C integrated e-commerce platform for used cars.

“Over the past six months, we have doubled our monthly revenue compared to pre-pandemic levels, a dramatic acceleration due to the impact of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic on consumer behavior across our region,” Eric Cheng, co-founder and CEO of Carsome, said in a statement.

“Consumers across our core markets of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore are increasingly purchasing cars to keep their families safe and adapt their businesses.”

Carsome’s core offering is an online portal that allows car owners to source bids for their vehicles from pre-screened commercial car dealers and access support services across the sales process, including inspection, valuation, payment, and logistics. The company says its inspectors appraise cars on-site using “proprietary inspector toolsets” and pricing models.

The company, founded in 2015, celebrated its 100,000th car sold through its platform last month. It now employs more than 1,000 people and facilitates the sale of 70,000 on an annualized basis, with a total transaction value of $600 million. The company turned an operating profit for the first time in October.

In recent months, Carsome has rolled out various incentives and bonus rewards for used car dealers in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand under its Dealer Alliance support program. The company also introduced its COVID-19 Support Fund this year for employees affected by the pandemic.

Asia Partners was founded by Oliver Rippel, previously an executive at South African conglomerate Naspers, and Nick Nash, the former president of Singapore gaming platform Sea. Nash was head of Southeast Asia at General Atlantic before joining Sea.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Expansion
• Consumer
• Malaysia
• Asia Partners
• Burda Principal Investments
• automobiles
• Financial Services
• TMT