Petaling Jaya, Malaysia-based used car marketplace Carsome has raised US$ 30M in a Series D funding round held in December 2020, led by Asia Partners. Existing investors Burda Principal Investments and Ondine Capital also participated in the funding round.
Proceeds from the funding round will be utilized by the startup to strengthen its consumer-to-business (C2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) services. The freshly obtained capital will also be used to support Carsome’s potential M&A opportunities in acquiring supplementary capabilities and combining its supply chain.
Founded in 2015 by Eric Cheng and Jiun Ee Teoh, Carsome provides end-to-end solutions such as car inspection, ownership transfer, payment, logistics needs to customers and used-car dealers. Through its online bidding portal, customers are able to sell their vehicles directly to dealers across the country. Its platform empowers the customers to sell their cars as fast as one day with zero charges and negligible effort.
The startup has expanded to Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore and has one of the largest dealer networks with more than 2,500 registered dealers on its platform. Every car that is available on Carsome’s platform goes through an all-inclusive 175-point inspection, and every car purchase comes with an extended warranty and a money-back guarantee. The startup claims presently it is handling an annualized 70,000 cars totaling US$600 million in transacted value. It employs over 1,000 individuals across all its offices. It also further reported that it doubled its Q3 2020 revenues from the pre-COVID period, and attained operational profitability as of October 2020.
Eric Cheng, Co-founder and Group CEO of Carsome said that over the past six months, the startup has doubled its monthly revenue compared to pre-pandemic levels. He also added that customers across its core markets of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore are increasingly purchasing cars to keep their families safe and adapt their businesses.
Oliver M. Rippel of Asia Partners said that Carsome’s integrated approach offering a one-stop solution to used-car purchasers and sellers is genuinely striking. He feels that this will be the way forward for the used car industry and that his team looks forward to working closely with Eric and his talented team in further scaling the business across the region.
Juliet Zhu, Carsome Group CFO was quoted to say, “We have built a defensible, scalable, and profitable business with very healthy unit economics attributed to both growth in gross margin and steady improvements in productivity and conversion metrics.”
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