Carmudi Philippines is set to scale up its operations as its parent company CarDekho group, India’s leading auto-tech company, raises USD70 million in Series D funding from leading investors in China and Europe.
Carmudi Philippines (Carmudi.com.ph) is the country’s largest used car classifieds website.
Carmudi’s acquisition by CarDekho in 2019 marks the latter’s second country of operations in Southeast Asia, the first being the launch of its Indonesia operations in 2016 under the brand name OTO.com, which has since become the number one new-auto portal in the country.
CarDekho’s Series D funding mainly comes from from Ping An Global Voyager Fund, an investor arm of Chinese financial services behemoth Ping An, and Sunley House Capital Management, a subsidiary of global private equity firm Advent International, along with participation of existing investors Sequoia India and Hillhouse. This is the second round of fundraising for the company in 2019. Earlier that year, CarDekho group raised USD 110 million in series C.
CarDekho group is now backed by marquee investors including Sequoia India, Hillhouse Capital, Ping An, Sunley House, CapitalG (formerly known as Google Capital), HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Times Internet, Trifecta and Ratan Tata.
Series D funding is typically undertaken by companies that have identified new markets for expansion.
“With this fund raise, we will deploy part of the capital raised to Southeast Asia and look to scale up our operations in Philippines,” said Umang Kumar, Co-founder and President, CarDekho Group.
“We are committed to help consumers throughout their car buying & selling journey and have come a step closer in building a platform which provides end-to-end auto solutions to them,” Kumar said in closing.
The new funding of Carmudi’s parent company would trickle down to the country with it being one of the focus markets in South East Asia for the next year/s to come. This would mean enough resources to expand its audience and reach in service availability in the Philippines.
Likewise, it would also equate to the growth of the Carmudi team in its effort to execute and mirror the previously successful service offerings and business models in India. The Philippine market should be expecting a highly personalized experience with Carmudi’s wide service line-up to cater to their car buying and selling needs in the months to come.