Saif Invests $5 Mn In Pre-Owned Car Marketplace Zoomo In Series A

SAIF Partners has invested $5 Mn in Bangalore-based pre-owned car marketplace Zoomo. This takes the total funds raised by Zoomo to $6 Mn, previously Saif had invested $1 Mn into the startup in seed round.

The peer-to-peer platform for user car transactions helps the patrons to buy verified, pre-inspected cars from direct owners without paying any brokerage. The investment will be used to strengthen their operations, technology and product leadership in their niche.

Currently it has services in Bangalore & Mumbai with impending launches in Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad & Chandigarh.

The startup does not charge any commission or listing fees and cut downs the intermediaries, dealers and brokers, ensuring the best price to its buyers and sellers. Users are offered services throughout the transaction process including car shortlisting, establishing a fair price, inspection, paperwork, advance booking, loans, insurance, warranty, refurbishing and post sales support.

Commenting on this alliance with SAIF Partners, Arnav Kumar, Co-founder, and CEO, Gozoomo said, “We are looking to disrupt an industry which is already worth 10bilion dollars. And we will only grow from here. India’s motorization rate is 18 per thousand inhabitants. US’s motorization rate is 791, Brazil’s motorization rate is 187. Used cars sales per thousand capita in India is 2.6. Compare that with US (129) & Brazil (17.8).

Zoomo was founded in 2014 by IIT alumni Arnav Kumar, Himangshu Hazarika and Aniket Behera.

According to the company there are over 2600 cars listed on the platform and the startup has witnessed 10X growth in last quarter (30 per month in March to 300 per month in June). So far, the platform has facilitated over 900 transactions.

The market for pre-owned goods which is currently dominated by Olx and Quikr has started witnessing the rise of startups that are targeting a particularly category. Further, according to a recent study done by Google India and Mahindra First Choice Wheels Ltd online searches for used cars alone has seen an increase of 20 times in the last six years, which indicates a compounded annual growth rate of 54%. The annual used-car demand in the Indian market is around 1.4 Mn cars. Tapping this market, apart from Zoomo players like Carwale, Mahindrafirstchoice, Catrade among others have been trying to dominate the market in the used car sale segment.

Truebil is yet another startup that is targeting the pre-owned good segment with a focus on cars and has even grabbed $500K in its first round of funding led by Kae Capital and angel investor Anupam Mittal, Founder and CEO of People Group a few weeks back.