Alpha Wave leads $300m round for India's Cars24
Indian used car platform Cars24 has raised $400 million in funding – comprising $300 million in equity and $100 million in debt – at a valuation of $3.3 billion.
It comes within three months of the company closing its Series F round on $450 million and securing $110 million in debt financing. At that time, Cars24 was worth $1.84 billion, nearly twice the $1 billion valuation of its $200 million Series E less than 12 months earlier.
Alpha Wave Global, formerly Falcon Edge Capital, led the equity portion of the latest round, with participation from existing investors. The debt comes from financial institutions in India, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), including IFM Investors and Commercial Bank of Dubai.
Participants in Cars24’s earlier rounds include DST Global, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Tencent Holdings, Moore Strategic Ventures, Exor Seeds, Sequoia Capital India, Partners Group, Unbound, KCK Global, Kingsway Capital Management, 500 Startups, Asia Venture Group, GE32 Capital, Regent Street Partners, Vendebita Trading, and VH Capital. Total funding to date is approximately $1.3 billion.
Cars24 allows users to buy and resell used cars of any make and in any condition with an emphasis on ensuring speed and value through an online vehicle appraisal calculator and artificial intelligence pricing algorithms. It claims a more than 90% market share in the online used car segment.
The platform is said to be used more than 13 million times a month, surpassing pre-pandemic traffic levels. It has facilitated more than 400,000 transactions since its inception in 2015, with recent traction attributable to an expansion into the two-wheeler category.
The company has a presence in Australia and the UAE, and it recently entered Thailand as part of a Southeast Asia push. Gajendra Jangid, co-founder of Cars24, told The Economic Times that global expansion and building large-scale refurbishment labs in India are priorities. The company has ended operations in 80 locations in favor of creating larger, centralized facilities.
He added that the company’s annualized revenue run-rate is close to $1 billion, including contributions from a vehicle financing unit that has a loan book of around INR15 billion. About 50% of customers obtain financing.
Two of Cars24’s rival automotive marketplaces, Droom and Spinny, have become unicorns in the past six months. The former raised $200 million at a valuation of $1.2 billion in July and the latter hit $1.8 billion on closing a $283 million Series F earlier in December.
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