Sequoia Capital and others infuse $50 Mn in used car buying platform Cars24

Used car buying platform Cars24 has raised a $50 million fresh round from Sequoia Capital and its early backers including Cayman Islands-based Kingsway FCI Fund and Toronto-headquartered KCK Global Limited.

Importantly, Sequoia also has CarDekho in its portfolio. The venture capital firm has been investing in the Jaipur-based company since 2013. It led Series A and participated in series B round of the auto classifieds.

Citing sources, an ET report has estimated Cars24 valuation up to $250 million in the current financing round. With this fresh capital infusion, the company has amassed $100 million total risk capital from multiple investors such as Apoletto Asia, Venture Highway, 500 Startups III and Mauritius-based Regent Street Partners amongst several others.

Entrackr has been the first ever platform to reveal Cars24 previous funding rounds. Previously, it had secured $49.5 million capital from the aforementioned investor including Cyprus-based Vendebita Trading Ltd. and Philipp Freise (KKR Private Equity).

Floated by former Fabfurnish co-founders Vikram Chopra and Mehul Agrawal, Cars24 has an asset-heavy model, which buys the car on behalf of dealers. A couple of months ago, it also opened the first consumer-facing offline outlet in South Delhi Vasant Square Mall (Vasant Kunj).

Cars24 had claimed to facilitate 35,000 transactions with an estimated GMV of $1 billion in September last year. Since then, it has not given any fresh transaction and other figures.

The company has about 50 branches across 11 cities and successfully managed to auction over 100K cars in the calendar year 2017.

Cars24 raised $50 Mn since inception: Neither disclosed nor ever discussed, but why?

According to RoC filings with MCA, the company had a total revenue of Rs 420 crore in FY17 while it reported losses of Rs 76 crore. It had incurred a total expense of about Rs 497 crore during the FY17.

Cars24 is yet to file financials for FY18.

For Sequoia, Cars24 is the second investment in automobile space. However, its investment in the Gurugram-based company is different from CarDekho. CarDekho follows classifieds (for users) and lead generation (OEMs and dealers) models while Cars24 buys used cars on behalf of dealers.