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New Delhi-based online used car marketplaces, Hopcar, has announced merger with Gurgaon-based Spinny. Post merger, the two companies will work under a common brand name Spinny. The four co-founders of Hopcar viz. Arijit Biswas, Rahul Thakur, Anish Karan, and Rahul Anand will join the core-team members at Spinny.
The merged entity will now focus on setting its foothold in Bangalore and expanding to other tier I and tier II cities by the end of this financial year.
Niraj, an IIT-D alumni and a Serial Entrepreneur, co-founded Spinny last year in April, along with Ramanshu Mahaur (Adobe), Ganesh Pawar (ex-Flipkart) and Mohit Gupta (ex-Flipkart).
“Having witnessed information asymmetry being a hindrance in the process of buying and selling used cars, I wanted to establish Spinny as the platform that bridged that gap between the two stakeholders,” said Niraj.
The unique proposition that Spinny brought to the market was an analytically developed 200-point inspection checklist that assesses a car’s true condition and it’s right price. This works in two ways – firstly, by helping the buyer make an informed decision about the purchase and secondly, by helping sellers claim the right price for their cars.
While Spinny had been working on incorporating a scientifically developed Pricing Engine and an algorithm-based Rating Engine in their processes to strengthen the tech-side to their business, Hopcar.in was onto something similar, which was started in August last year. The company connects buyers directly to sellers, assuring quality at accurate prices in a hassle free and transparent manner.
“Seeing how our visions and approach naturally synced, it only seemed tactful to make concerted rather than disjointed efforts towards the same aim, hence the merger happened,” said Arijit.
By 2020, the pre-owned car space will record GMV of 45 Bn with much of this increase led by the increasing presence of online players as per Ken Research.
Other players in this space dealing in C2C segment include Cardekho, Cartrade, Droom, Carwale, Zigwheels, along with some indirect players such as Quikr and OLX. Droom recently grabbed a series B round of funding led by BEENEXT, Digital Garage LightBox Ventures and Beenos. Another platform in C2B segment is DriveO, launched by Rajesh Singh, former head of sales and marketing at General Motors.
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