Car Cleaning, Repair CleanseCar Raises $2 Mn From Haldiram’s, Dhianu Das, Others

Daily car cleaning and repair service CleanseCar, on October 9, has announced a funding of  $2 Mn in Pre Series A round from 10 investors, including Haldiram’s Family Office, Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, founder, Venture Catalysts and Rahul Bothra, CFO, Swiggy. It is expected that the company will use the fund to expand its services to all metropolitan cities and adopt better technology. 

The list of other investors in this series include:

• Dhianu Das: Founder, Alfa Venture
• Karan Kumar: Founder, Amalthea Capital
• Mitesh Shah: Ex CFO Ola, CFO BookMyShow and Co-founder IP Ventures
• Lalit Agarwal: Head of Venture Capital at a Sovereign Wealth Fund
• Bobby Reddy: Indus Ventures
• Sagar Agarwal: ex MD, Evolvence India Fund
• Nandi Vardhan Mehta: Head of Finance, KAAF Family Investments Office

Launched in January 2018 by Kalyandhar Vinukonda and Pratibha Shalini, CleanseCar had raised $487K (INR 3.5 Cr) angel funding from Venture Catalysts including Omphalos Venture India LLP, Rishabh Mahimtura, Anil Patel, Vishal Brambhatt and others participated in the round, in November 2018.

The Bengaluru-based startup claims to have over 20K monthly subscribers in metropolitans like Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Gurgaon. ClenseCar, which started from cleaning services, has expanded its portfolio to include on-demand bike services and roadside assistance for cars. The on-demand bike services serve over 500 bike servicing per month. 

CleanseCar also provides services like real-time car wash status, one-click renewal, online payments and easy scheduling process. 

With this funding, the company aims to fulfill the target of servicing one lakh cars daily and provide two thousand on-demand bike services every month across all metro cities in India. 

CleanseCar’s competitors include Bengaluru-based Pitstop. Founded in 2015 by Sandeep Menon, the startup provides car service and repair services in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Kochi. The company had raised $1.6 Mn in its Pre Series A round from Blume Ventures and Singapore-based Goldbell Group, in April 2018.

How Is India’s Automobile Industry Faring?

According to India Brand Equity Foundation’s (IBEFs) report, the Indian auto industry is the fourth largest in the world. The domestic sales of the automobile had increased at 6.71% of the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2013-2019. The report points out that 26.27 Mn vehicles were sold in India in the financial year  2018-2019. 

Another report points out that the Indian automotive industry is expected to reach $251.4-282.8 Bn by 2026, and will emerge as the world’s third-largest passenger vehicle market by 2021.