Ibibo Group, the Indian unit of South African internet and media giant, Naspers is reportedly in talks to sell online automotive marketplace Gaadi.com. The reports suggest that the group is in talks with a number of bidders for the same, but Sequoia Capital backed CarDekho’s offer is been seriously considered.
It is expected that CarDekho might put in $11 Mn for buying Gaadi.com from Ibibo Group, which Ibibo had acquired three years back for $2 Mn and later had infused a similar amount into it.
Though there has been no confirmation about the development, Ashish Kashyap, CEO of Ibibo Group denied commenting on this speculation. CarDekho’s email response to Inc42, states “I would like to just say that it is not yet inked at our end, so I can neither comment nor confirm on the same.”
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.
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 like Bikedekho and Pricedekho. It had received $15 Mn in funding from Sequoia Capital last year and recently, the company has launched the CarDekho mobile app on Android platform.
The online auto classifieds market in India is expected to grow to around $100 Mn in the next 4-5 years with it covering a majority of the online ad spends which is just $30-50 Mn at the moment, of which only 10% is spent on online classifieds sites.
