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Buying a car used to be very difficult before the internet emerged because the industry was just too scattered. Today we have a lot of online portals that will take you through the process effortlessly. One such portal is CarDekho.
Founded by Amit Jain and Anurag Jain in 2008, Cardekho is a prominent car search venture that helps users find fitting new and old car variants and buy them without any hassles.
Here's the StartupTalky article to know about CarDekho, founders, competitors, business and revenue model, startup launch, funding, investors, and acquisitions.
CarDekho - Company Highlights
| Startup Name | CarDekho |
|---|---|
| Headquarter | Gurugram, India |
| Sector | Automotive Ecommerce |
| Founders | Amit Jain, Anurag Jain and Umang Kumar |
| Founded | 2007 |
| Revenue/Turnover | $125.49 million (Rs 936 Crores) in FY21 |
| Total Funding | $497.5 million (Oct 2021) |
| Valuation | ~ $1.2 billion (Oct 2021) |
| Parent Organization | Girnar Software Private Limited |
| Website | cardekho.com |
CarDekho - About the Company and How it Works
CarDekho - USP and Innovation
CarDekho - Founders and team
CarDekho - Startup Story | How was CarDekho Started?
CarDekho - Startup Launch
CarDekho - Mission and Vision
CarDekho - Name, Logo and Tagline
CarDekho - Growth and Revenue
CarDekho - Business Model and Revenue Model
CarDekho - Challenges
CarDekho - Competitors
CarDekho - Funding and Investors
CarDekho - Acquisitions
CarDekho - Awards
CarDekho - Future Plans
CarDekho - About the Company and How it Works
CarDekho is the product of ‘GirnarSoft’ owned by the founder duo, Amit and Anurag Jain. CarDekho is a web app that has almost anything and everything about an automobile. Both the app and the CarDekho.com website boasts rich automotive content including but not limited to expert reviews, detailed specs, and prices of cars, comparisons of cars, pictures, and videos of an exhausting range of car brands and models available in India.
CarDekho not only lists vehicles for trade but also offers the users a platform for buying and selling used cars. Furthermore, the company also provides dynamic services including insights about the automobile industry, fresh updates, car images and videos, car features, recent launches, prices, or other car specifications in the layman's language so that people at home can understand.
While browsing through their website, the consumer comes across various categories like new launches, upcoming vehicles, used vehicles, to name only a few.
This is not it.
CarDekho also has its own e-store. This e-store portrays and sells a wide array of automobile accessories such as stickers, floor mats, scratch removers, polish, mobile chargers, shampoo, navigators, seat covers, tires, alloy wheels, car stereos, car perfumes, sun films, and many more.
Apart from the services offered relating to the automobile industry, the company also offers various financial services to aid the customers, like instant car loans and car insurance schemes. These financial services are presented by CarDekho in association with BankBazaar.com and Berkshire Insurance respectively.
CarDekho has an automotive forum on its website where experts and reviewers that are working with the company answer and resolve car-related queries that are posted on the forum.
To cut the long story short, CarDekho is more or less like a virtual car dealer, which is technically sound, updated, and most importantly, provides an effortless 360-degree experience to its customers.
Rishabh Rathi
CarDekho - USP and Innovation
CarDekho.com has launched many innovative features to ensure that users get an immersive experience of the car model before visiting a dealer showroom. These include a Feel The Car tool that gives 360-degree interior/exterior views with sounds of the car and explanations of features with videos. It also offers features for searching and comparing cars by the makes, models, prices, features, and more. Furthermore, it also provides live offers and promotions in all cities.
The platform also has used car classifieds wherein users can upload their cars for sale, and find used cars for buying from individuals and used car dealers.
Along with the above consumer product features, CarDekho.com provides a rich array of tech-enabled tools to OE manufacturers and car dealers. These include apps for dealer sales executives to manage leads, cloud services for tracking sales performance, call tracker solutions, digital marketing support, a virtual online showroom, and outsourced lead management operational processes for taking consumers from inquiry to sale.
CarDekho - Founders and team
Amit Jain and Anurag Jain are the founders of CarDekho. Amit Jain is the CEO and Co-Founder while Anurag Jain acts as the COO and Co-Founder at CarDekho. Umang Kumar has also been the co-founder of the company since CarDekho has acquired Gaadi.com.
Amit Jain
Amit Jain is an IIT Delhi alumnus from where he obtained a Btech degree before going on to join Tata Consultancy Services. Leaving TCS after serving the company for a little more than a year, Amit joined Trilogy where he went to be a Product Manager. Jain next started with GirnarSoft as the CEO and Co-founder of the company, which he is still serving as at the present. Amit Jain is also the CEO and Co-founder of CarDekho.
Anurag Jain
Anurag Jain is also an IIT Delhi alumnus who has obtained an Integrated Masters of Technology in Mathematics and Computing. Jain was a Senior Systems Consultant at i2 Technologies after which he joined Sabre Holdings as a Senior Operations Research Analyst. Anurag is currently serving as the COO and Co-founder at GirnarSoft.
The founder and brother duo were both born on November 12th and completed their schooling at St Xavier’s School, Jaipur. Both of them later went on to IIT Delhi, where Amit opted for civil engineering whereas Anurag studied mathematics and computer sciences. They had spent around 8 years working in the corporate sector with companies like TCS & Trilogy and that’s how Amit developed a liking for products and technology-related things.
Umang Kumar
Umang Kumar was earlier the co-founder of Gaadi.com but ever since the latter has been acquired by CarDekho, Kumar has been associated with the team, where he has been serving as the Co-founder and President. Umang Kumar is an alumnus of Visvesvaraya technological university, from where he obtained a BE degree in Computers. Kumar next went on to pursue a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian School of Business and then joined the Harvard Business School for the Naspers program in General Management, Strategy & Leadership. Before joining Gaadi Web as the co-founder and CEO, Umang founded another company, Accentium Web. During his career Umang served a couple of other companies - 9.9 Mediaworx and ABP, where he served in key leadership positions.
The Cardekho management team comprises Amit Jain (Co-founder and CEO), Anurag Jain (Co-founder), Umang Kumar (CEO, International Business and Co-founder). The others in the Car dekho management include Mayank Gupta (CFO), Umesh Hara (CEO, Used Cars), Manish Wadhwa (CPO), Vivek Srivastava (Chief Product and Technology Officer), and more.
Yash Gupta
CarDekho - Startup Story | How was CarDekho Started?
All of this started when due to some personal reasons, these brothers left their jobs and came back to their hometown. And instead of getting into their family business which happens to be jewelry, this duo thought of starting their enterprise. Eventually, the founder duo concluded doing what they were best at. And this led them to launch GirnarSoft, an IT outsourcing company.
They started by shooting emails to get bigger clients on board. But obviously, this was a tedious task and tested their perseverance. And after shooting billions of emails and making thousands of calls, they finally got on board their first client! Though this project didn’t pay them that much, it led to another project and building a chain of references. Following this, they started hiring and accumulating funds to start their project, and thus, CarDekho was born.
CarDekho - Startup Launch
A lot of thought and conceptualizing went into building CarDekho after its launch. Even though the company had been launched, they kept their IT consultancy services on-going because the founders wanted the primary income to keep flowing. CarDekho is one of those companies that take the consumer through the whole process, from start till the end and during the process, make sure that the customer is satisfied.
Like all the other entrepreneurial ventures, this company too was a little slow in the beginning, but when it geared up the pace, the founders never looked back. And soon enough, its numbers did the talking when they roared success out loud to the world.
Rishabh Rathi
CarDekho - Mission and Vision
CarDekho's mission is to digitize the auto ecosystem and make the vehicle ownership journey easy for the customers. CarDekho envisions to become the largest personal mobility player in the Indian market.
CarDekho - Name, Logo and Tagline
The naming of CarDekho has been done because the website aims to help the users to browse through cars and car-related information.
The tagline of Cardekho says, "Right Car, Right Now."
CarDekho - Growth and Revenue
By January 2012, CarDekho had served 3.4 crore unique visitors being in the 4th year in its journey. By the end of 2012, the company had covered 2.5 crores, unique visitors, in just one year, which came to be their all-time high. Within no time, CarDekho was on the top of the game when the portal scored a record 1.7 lakh used car sales across all the cities of India.
CarDekho launched its iOS application, a month after the Android application was launched, which scored to attain 100,000 downloads in just one month. In 2014, its unique visitors on the web portal doubled and the revenues increased by 3x.
By 2014, they were ruling the segment with pride and a team of more than 600 employees! Following this, CarDekho launched BikeDekho, PriceDekho, MobileDekho, and many other similar portals under its umbrella.
CarDekho claimed that it works actively with over 4,000 new auto dealerships and 3,000 used car dealers across India. In addition, it also stated that it has collaborated with more than 10 financial institutions and 18 insurance companies across the country to facilitate used car financing and insurance to provide a seamless experience for both buyers and sellers.
CarDekho has launched Gaadi by CarDekho in January 2019 after it acquihired CarBiqi when it forayed into the auction model. It started with the opening of about 8-10 Gaadi by CarDekho stores across the National Capital Region (NCR). CarDekho's stores had increased to around 60 operational stores across the country throughout the next year and a half.
However, the company has now decided to move towards purchasing cars only after a home inspection, as of September 10, 2021. For this reason, CarDekho had eventually closed more than 20 of its stores from across the country.
CarDekho has shut down numerous Gaadi by CarDekho stores that the company had across the country. The Gurgaon-based used car content and commerce platform had reportedly closed or on the brink of closing anywhere around 21-25 of its stores, most of which are located in Delhi NCR, including Faridabad and Ghaziabad; Mumbai, Pune, and Bengaluru by October 2021. The main reason for shutting down the CarDekho stores is the company's shift to the home inspection model, where the company will go for purchasing cars only after a home inspection. CarDekho believes that this will be more efficient as its business model, as a result of the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis.
CarDekho reported revenue of Rs 260 crores in the year that ended in March 2019, i.e., an increase of around 62% from the previous fiscal. The automobile marketplace has posted FY21 revenues worth Rs 936 crore, which was last reported to be Rs 754.6 crore in FY20. The company has also piled up on its losses, which currently stand at Rs 342.8 crore, slightly rising from Rs 326.4 crore in FY20.
The operating revenues of CarDekho grew by 20% to stand at Rs 884.4 cr during FY21, which was last recorded at Rs 706.3 cr in FY20.
The used-car selling platform purchases cars from the users of CarDekho and then sells them to car dealers across the country earning revenues. This revenue vertical showed a 67.4% growth in FY21, bringing around Rs 489 crore in revenues for the company from Rs 292 cr in FY20. Here's the complete revenue breakdown of CarDekho below and its comparison with the previous fiscal:
CarDekho Revenue Breakdown
| CarDekho Revenue Verticals | FY21 | FY20 |
|---|---|---|
| Sale of Used Cars to Dealers | Rs 489 cr | Rs 292 cr |
| Advertising and Digital Marketing | Rs 246 cr | Rs 227 cr |
| Commission from Car Dealers | Rs 104 cr | Rs 142 cr |
| Insurance Brokerage | Rs 30 cr | Rs 33 cr |
| Other Operating Income | Rs 16 cr | Rs 11 cr |
CarDekho Expenses Breakdown
The company's purchasing of used cars from their owners stands as the largest cost center for the company in FY21, which grew by 66.2% to become nearly Rs 481 cr from Rs 289.4 cr, and has contributed to 37.6% of its annual expenses.
| CarDekho Expenses Verticals | FY21 | FY20 |
|---|---|---|
| Employee Benefit Expenses | Rs 435 cr | Rs 339 cr |
| Cost of cars purchased | Rs 481 cr | Rs 289 cr |
| Others | Rs 125 cr | Rs 141 cr |
| Rent and Utility | Rs 18 cr | Rs 31 cr |
| Outsourcing and Towering Expenses | Rs 52 cr | Rs 75 cr |
| Advertising and Promotional Expenses | Rs 178 cr | Rs 234 cr |
CarDekho Financials
Here's a look at the breakdown of the CarDekho financials in FY21 compared with FY20:
| CarDekho Financials | FY21 | FY20 |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue from Operations | Rs 884.4 cr | Rs 706.3 cr |
| Total Expenses | Rs 1277.6 cr | Rs 1080.9 cr |
| Profit/Loss | Loss of Rs 343 cr | Loss of Rs 326.5 |
| EBITDA Margin | -32.24% | -37.63% |
Going by the unit level calculation, CarDekho has spent Rs 1.44 to earn a single rupee of revenue during FY21, which is a slight improvement from Rs 1.53 spent during FY20. The Gurgaon-based used-car platform has grown by 20% in FY21, thereby surpassing another Haryana-based online automobile marketplace, Droom, its biggest rival, which has, in turn, seen a 13% reduction in its scale.
CarDekho - Business Model and Revenue Model
Cardekho serves as a knowledge-based eCommerce website for car enthusiasts along with being an eCommerce platform for used cars.
The revenue model of CarDekho has been simple and clear-cut since day 1. Here are the primary mediums through which CarDekho earns its revenues from:
- AdSense
- Sponsored advertisements
- Commissions from the manufacturers and dealers
- Affiliate marketing
- Lead generation
- Car insurances
CarDekho - Challenges
CarDekho has faced numerous challenges to establishing itself in the market, which was earlier dominated by new cars and other disorganized players providing used cars offline. However, the COVID-19 onslaught is almost a blessing in disguise for the used-car marketplace because of the fear surrounding the public vehicles and overcrowding. Building
CarDekho - Competitors
Other online marketplaces in India that deal and cater to the same set of the target audience are:
Ashwini
CarDekho - Funding and Investors
So far, CarDekho has raised $497.5 million spread across 9 funding rounds to date. CarDekho's last funding rounds were a mix of a debt round worth $50 million and an equity round of $200 million on October 13, 2021, led by LeapFrog Investments along with a bunch of other existing investors.
This round helped CarDekho to earn a unicorn valuation, being valued presently at $1.2 billion. CarDekho becomes the third Indian unicorn in the used car retailing space so far in 2021. Here is a list of all the funding rounds of CarDekho:
| Date | Stage | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 13, 2021 | Series E | $200 million | LeapFrog Investments |
| October 13, 2021 | Debt financing | $50 million | - |
| December 5, 2019 | Series D | $70 million | Ping An Global Voyager Fund |
| January 3, 2019 | Series C | $110 million | CapitalG, Hillhouse Capital Group, Sequoia Capital India |
| March 21, 2018 | Series B | $2.5 million | Sequoia Capital India |
| March 21, 2016 | Venture Round | - | CapitalG |
| May 28, 2015 | Venture Round | - | HDFC Bank |
| January 28, 2015 | Series B | $50M | Hillhouse Capital Group, Bourne Capital |
| November 27, 2013 | Series A | $15 million | Sequoia Capital India |
CarDekho.com, which went live in 2008, was set up by a bunch of young, enthusiastic IIT graduates. Its investors include Google Capital, Tybourne Capital, Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital, HDFC Bank, Ratan Tata, and Times Internet.
CarDekho also announced a secondary sale in February 2020 allowing eligible employees to cash out 50 percent of their vested options under Girnarsoft group’s ESOP Exercise. According to the company, the cash out is estimated to be worth $3.5 million. This is the second time that this scheme has been floated by the startup this financial year. The first ESOP cash-out was announced in April 2019, in which CarDekho bought ESOPs worth $2 million.
CarDekho - Acquisitions
CarDekho has acquired 3 organizations.
| Acquired | Date |
|---|---|
| Gaadi Web | September 2014 |
| Zigwheels | September 2015 |
| Carmudi Philippines | November 2019 |
- Gaadi Web is an automotive portal for the Indian market with a search platform for new, used, and upcoming vehicles.
- ZigWheels.com is India’s leading auto portal offering the most comprehensive coverage of the latest news.
- Carmudi Philippines operates like a local automotive website.
In September 2014, CarDekho acquired ibibo-owned Gaadi.com for $11 million. Following this, CarDekho went on to become the undisputed market leader with a massive volume of 15 million visitors on a monthly basis.
Varad Kitey
CarDekho - Awards
Some of the noteworthy awards that CarDekho received in its early days were:
- Best Automotive Website of 2009
- Best Car Website of 2012
- Most Popular Website of 2012
- Website of the Year India 2011 & 2012
CarDekho - Future Plans
CarDekho is currently looking to expand its business to the Southeast Asian markets. The company is, according to the Co-founder and President Umang Kumar, aiming to establish its leadership in the automobile ecosystem of the region. CarDekho has already started its operations in Malaysia and Indonesia (under the name OTO). Furthermore, it has also started operating in the Phillipines, with the acquisition of Carmudi.
FAQs
Who is CarDekho Founder?
Amit Jain, Anurag Jain and Umang Kumar are the founders of CarDekho.
Is Cardekho reliable? How are CarDekho cars?
Yes, CarDekho is reliable. It is, in fact, one of the most trusted places for certified pre-owned cars. CarDekho cars are thoroughly inspected and come with a 6 months warranty along with a 7-day money-back guarantee.
How much is Car Dekho Valuation?
It is valued at $1.2 billion post the last funding round on October 13, 2021.
What is CarDekho Revenue Model?
The primary mediums through which CarDekho earns its revenue from are:
- AdSense
- Sponsored advertisements
- Commissions from the manufacturers and dealers
- Affiliate marketing
- Lead generation
- Car insurances
How much is CarDekho Funding?
So far, CarDekho has raised $497.5 million spread across 9 funding rounds to date.
Source :- https://startuptalky.com/ Author :- Rishabh Rathi Date :-March 11, 2022 at 11:17AM