Consolidation in Indian auto ecommerce: CarTrade buys CarWale

German media conglomerate Axel Springer sells its majority stake in CarWale to CarTrade, reports Tech in Asia

The auto market in India is both huge and disorganised. Naturally, this is a magnet for tech start-ups. A number of well-funded online portals have come up in recent times to connect sellers with buyers more efficiently in this chaotic market. But now consolidation is under way as competition gets intense.

German media conglomerate Axel Springer announced yesterday it had sold its majority stake in Indian automobiles portal CarWale to one of its major rivals, CarTrade.
 

This comes soon after another major player in this space, CarDekho, announced the acquisition of Times Internet’s Zigwheels. Earlier, it had acquired another portal called Gaadi from the Ibibo Group.
 

 

CarTrade’s buyout of CarWale comes a year after it raised $30 million in a funding round led by Warburg Pincus. Chip Perry, founder of AutoTrader, in the US, later came in as a marquee investor.
 

CarTrade faces some tough-as-nails rivals. Sequoia-backed CarDekho heads the list. It’s been raising an awful lot of funding, some of it undisclosed still.
 

In November 2013, CarDekho’s parent company Girnar raised $15 million in a series A round of funding from Sequoia Capital. A few months later, in January 2015, it raised its big series B round of $50 million from Chinese investment management firm Hillhouse Capital and Hong Kong-based hedge fund Tybourne Capital. Sequoia too participated in this round. A month later, Indian tycoon Ratan Tata pumped in an undisclosed amount into the company. In May, another undisclosed round of funding came from private sector lender HDFC Bank. With all the money in the bank, CarDekho has some serious muscle to flex in its tussle with CarTrade.

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This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.