Making it one of the biggest deal in the fragmented online auto classifieds, Sequoia Capital-backed Cardekho has acquired Ibibo Group-owned Gaadi.com. Ibibo had acquired Gaadi.com in 2011.
The rumors about this deal came first in June this year.
The financials of the deal has been left undisclosed as of now. However, as we reported earlier, CarDekho might have put in $11 Mn for buying Gaadi.com
“The acquisition is basically to help us evolve the pre-owned car market, which is currently only 10% of our revenues. In developed markets like the US, this is more than half the market. If we would have built this on our own, it would have taken us much longer,” said Amit Jain, founder & CEO of Cardekho.
Founded in 2008 by Ankur Warikoo, Vivek Pahwa, and Umang Kumar, Gaadi allows users to buy and sell new and pre-owned cars. It competes with Cartrade.com and Carwale.com and online classifieds services including Quikr and Olx.
The combined Cardekho and Gaadi entity is expected to become the largest online auto classifieds play by revenue and traffic; it expects to earn INR 500 Cr. in revenues with a 50-50 split between used and new car sales
Ashish Kashyap, CEO of Ibibo Group, said the company wants to focus on the online travel sector across its assets: Goibibo.com, TBOGroup, Redbus.in and YourBus. “We have significant scale in each of these businesses and would want to further expand in this sector,” he added.
The companies will continue to run independently and operate as separate businesses in order to drive focus, especially in the pre-owned car business.
CarDekho is run by Jaipur based Girnar Software Private Limited founded in 2007, by brothers Amit and Anurag Jain, both IIT-Delhi alumni, Girnar also runs portals likeBikedekho and Pricedekho. It had received $15 Mn in funding from Sequoia Capital last year in November.
