Barely five months after its previous $30-million funding round, Indian online automobile marketplace Droom has raised a similar sum in its Series E round.
The latest round, led by the family office of Japanese investor Joe Hirao, founder of ZIGExN, takes the total funding raised by the company to $125 million.
In May, Droom had raised $30 million in its Series D round led by Japanese firms Toyota Tsusho Corporation and Digital Garage. The round also saw participation from Ellison Investments, an Asia-based investment manager, existing investors and a number of institutional investors and family offices from China, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.
Droom is a Singapore holding company with subsidiaries in India and the US. The company has so far raised close to $125 million over six rounds of funding. Its key investors include Lightbox, Beenext, Beenos, Digital Garage, Toyota Tsusho Corporation, Integrated Assets Management besides the latest addition of Joe Hirao’s family office.
“The current series E funding gives an immense fillip to us as we aim to simultaneously strengthen and diversify our services such as inspection, Droom Credit, C2C and C2B marketplace formats, enable a smooth online transaction and provide more competitive terms and interest rates to customers through Droom Credit,” said founder and CEO Sandeep Aggarwal.
“The latest round of funding will help us in our expansion goals and, accomplishment of our growth objectives and scaling up our technology to build efficiency,” he added.
According to an official statement, the tech-led platform will also invest heavily in further developing its machine learning and AI capabilities for its products. It is also looking to invest in advanced, emerging technologies such as IoT for its ECO segment and blockchain for its credit facilitation services.
Droom, which has also been planning to enter the overseas markets starting with Southeast Asia, is, however, yet to embark on the initiative. The company claims to be generating close to $750 million in gross revenue and $20 million in net revenue and has plans to tap the IPO market by 2020.
The announcement follows recent news from Droom rival Cars24 picking up $50 million funding from venture capital major Sequoia Capital India. Sequoia is also an investor in another online marketplace for used cars, CarDekho. According to media reports, Cars24’s existing investors – Cayman Islands-based Kingsway FCI Fund and Toronto-based KCK Global – also participated in the latest funding round. The round is expected to have valued the company at $250 million.
In March this year, Sequoia had also led a $2.5 million Series B funding round in CarDekho, taking the company’s total funding to more than $70 million since its inception ten years ago. Last year in February, CarTrade had raised $55 million (about Rs. 366 crore) in a fresh round of funding co-led by existing backer Temasek and a US-based family office.
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