Accel-backed Spinny acquires used car marketplace Truebil

Full-stack pre-owned car retailing platform Spinny has acquired Truebil for an undisclosed sum. The deal will mark one of the first consolidations in the used car retailing segment where Spinny appears to have emerged as the leader.

“Truebil has been in discussions with multiple players for some time but finally decided to go ahead with Spinny,” said one of the sources on condition of anonymity. "The Kalaari-backed Truebil has not been in good shape for the past 12-15 months. Getting acquired was the only logical step for the company.”

The COVID-19 pandemic further aggravated Truebil’s problem. In September last year, Entrackr had highlighted that Truebil was looking to consolidate with a large group and Spinny was the frontrunner in the anticipated deal.

Forbes India reported the development first.

Spinny has also confirmed the acquisition but declined to share any further details. According to the sources mentioned above, the deal doesn't carry any upside for stakeholders. “Given Spinny is still in its early days, we will let the Truebil platform keep operating as an independent brand for now. We will reassess merging within the Spinny brand umbrella after some time," said the company in a response to our email queries. 

Spinny, which raised its last round just before the announcement of Corona virus-induced nationwide lockdown, was one of the few firms which claimed to scale even during the crisis.

Truebil operated a C2C managed used car marketplace along with a full-stack direct retail program as Truebil Direct across Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi (NCR).

Founded by Suraj Kalwani, Ravi Chirania, Shubh Bansal, Rakesh Raman, and Ritesh Pandey, Truebil has raised around $28 million from Joe Hirao,  Kalaari Capital, Shunwei Capital, Inventus Capital, Kae, Spiral Ventures among others.

“We realized that by augmenting each other's capabilities, we could accelerate towards building the country's largest and the most trusted used car brand,” said Kalwani.

Unlike other players in the used car segment, Spinny has built an entire value chain for a used car buying platform, which pushes refurbished cars to buyers through its digital channels, including popular marketplaces. It also helps in financing the vehicles including managing necessary paperwork and loan-related documents.

CarDekho, one of the remote competitors in this segment, has been testing the waters in a hybrid retail model and the latest consolidation will give Spinny an edge over its rivals, which also include OLX and Quikr.

Backed by the likes of Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum, SAIF Partners, and Accel, Spinny has raised over $65 million in risk capital and was valued at about $150 million during the last round in March.

We have updated the post with Truebil's comment.