Car portal CarDekho has raised an undisclosed amount of investment from HDFC Bank, a little over three months after raising Series B funding worth $50 million from Hillhouse Capital, Tybourne Capital, Sequoia and Ratan Tata. The partnership with HDFC Bank will also allow CarDekho’s users to buy a new or used car with possible financing from HDFC. Previously, the company had also raised $15 million from Sequoia Capital for a reported 20% stake in 2013.
75% of CarDekho users opt for loans
The car portal expects digital to have a 25% share in auto loan financing in the next 4 years and plans to facilitate auto loans worth a $1 billion through its portal. CarDekho claims to have over 17 million visits to its portal every month and states that the number includes 10 million unique buyers. It also claims that around 75% of its users buying cars on the portal opt for a financing option. CarDekho mentions that that together with Gaadi.com, it has around 5,000 dealer partners.
CarDekho launched TyreDekho and Indic language sites
This week, CarDekho launched a new platform called TyreDekho, which will provide users with tyre-related research tools, reviews and other content. This will include tyre listings for various cars and bikes sold in India, the information on tyre brands, products, features, pricing and dealers.
Last week, CarDekho launched 3 websites in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu languages. Instead of using the Google translate algorithm to translate into multiple languages, the company claimed that it built a new platform to translate all the content on its English site, because the site did not support a multi-lingual and multi-regional capability. The company said that it chose these three languages since they’re the most widely spoken in the country.
BuyingIQ and Gaadi acquisition
About a month ago, CarDekho bought price comparison website BuyingIQ. Girnarsoft, which operates CarDekho, PriceDekho and BikeDekho, said at the time that they bought BuyingIQ for the team and its technology. BuyingIQ was quoted to run independently post the buyout with its entire team being brought on GirnarSoft’s board.
Earlier in September 2014, CarDekho bought Ibibo’s automobile website Gaadi.com for a reported $11 million. Co-founder and CEO of CarDekho Amit Jain had at that time said that both the companies would continue to remain independent and operate as separate businesses. He said that the acquisition would enable them to focus on pre-owned car business which then accounted for only 10% of their revenues.
HDFC, on the other hand, claims to have over 28 million customers across Indian cities who bank through various channels such as branches, ATMs, phone, net and mobile banking. The bank states that it has over 4,000 branches and over 11,000 ATMs in around 2,500 cities and towns.
Competition
– In October 2014, CarTrade.com raised Rs 185 crore from Warburg Pincus, Tiger Global and Canaan Partners. It claims to currently offer more than 100,000 listings of used cars on its platform. It also has a used car pricing guide and and a certification program wherein the car’s present condition is jointly inspected by a CarTrade engineer & the selling dealer and a detailed report is included as part of the listing.
– Other players in this segment include Axel Springer’s CarWale, Times Internet’s ZigWheels and India.com’s Oncars.in. Warburg Pincus and Tiger Global backed classifieds site Quikr also competes with CarDekho as it features a used car listings section.
– Bangalore-based mobile peer-to-peer marketplace for buying & selling used cars Zoomo secured $1 million seed funding from SAIF Partners in December 2014.
