Online Car Marketplace CarDekho Raises $110M For Services Expansion

India-based internet car marketplace CarDekho has raised $110 million in fresh venture funding.

According to a report citing the Indian startup, it raised the money in a Series C round of fundraising led by Sequoia India, Hillhouse and Alphabet’s CapitalG. Axis Bank and a financing partner of CarDekho also participated in the fundraising round.

With the latest round of funding, CarDekho now has a valuation of $400 to $500 million. That is up from $360 million, which was the startup’s valuation in 2016 when it completed its previous fundraising round.

“Our contribution to a person buying a new car has grown manifold, and this will continue to be a bulwark for us,” said CEO and Co-founder Amit Jain in a statement to the outlet. “Our used cars engine has scaled up tremendously, and has also enabled us to incubate allied businesses like insurance and finance, as they are [some] of the largest opportunities ahead of us. The opportunity lies in extending formal credit and insurance coverage to the new-to-formal economy population, and will continue to be a focus area for us.”

CarDekho says it has 39 million monthly unique visitors and boasts six million downloads of its apps. Its revenue was 160 crore ($22.8 million) in the 2017-18 financial year, up from 114 crore ($16.3 million) in the 2016-2017 financial year. The company works with 5,000 car dealers in India and has direct retail deals with eight car and motorbike makers. Its website accounted for 42 percent of dealers’ sales and 15 percent to 30 percent of automakers‘ and bikemakers’ sales on an annual basis, the company stated. The report noted that CarDekho wouldn’t provide details as to how they came up with those figures.

In addition to driving sales for dealers and manufacturers, CarDekho also provides customers with access to financing through its partners and started providing insurance options in 2017.

Part of the funding will go toward building more transaction services associated with the car purchasing process, noted the report.