Company Profile is an initiative by ListMyStartUp to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by CarDekho.
Buying a car used to be very difficult before the internet emerged because the industry was just too scattered. Today we have a lot of online portals that will take you through the process effortlessly. One such portal is CarDekho.
Founded by Amit Jain and Anurag Jain in 2008, CarDekho is a prominent car search venture that helps users find fitting new and old car variants and buy them without any hassles.
Here's the ListMyStartUp article to know about CarDekho, its founders, competitors, business and revenue model, startup story, funding, investors, acquisitions, and more.
CarDekho - Company Highlights
- Startup Name-CarDekho
- Headquarters-Jaipur, Rajasthan
- Sector-Automotive, Ecommerce
- Founders-Amit Jain, Anurag Jain, Umang Kumar
- Founded-2008
- Revenue-$108.04 million (Rs 884.4 Crore) FY21
- Total Funding-$497.5 million
- Valuation-$1.2 billion
- Parent Organization-Girnar Software Private Limited
- Website-cardekho.com
CarDekho - About the Company and How it Works
- CarDekho is the product of ‘GirnarSoft’ owned by the founder duo, Amit and Anurag Jain. CarDekho is a web app that has almost anything and everything about an automobile. Both the app and the CarDekho.com website boast rich automotive content including but not limited to expert reviews, detailed specs, and prices of cars, comparisons of cars, pictures, and videos of an exhausting range of car brands and models available in India.
- CarDekho not only lists vehicles for trade but also offers users a platform for buying and selling used cars. Furthermore, the company also provides dynamic services including insights about the automobile industry, fresh updates, car images and videos, car features, recent launches, prices, or other car specifications in layman's language so that people at home can understand.
- While browsing through their website, the consumer comes across various categories like new launches, upcoming vehicles, and used vehicles, to name only a few.
- This is not it.
- CarDekho also has its own e-store. This e-store portrays and sells a wide array of automobile accessories such as stickers, floor mats, scratch removers, polish, mobile chargers, shampoo, navigators, seat covers, tires, alloy wheels, car stereos, car perfumes, sun films, and many more.
- Apart from the services offered relating to the automobile industry, the company also offers various financial services to aid customers, like instant car loans and car insurance schemes. These financial services are presented by CarDekho in association with BankBazaar.com and Berkshire Insurance respectively.
- CarDekho has an automotive forum on its website where experts and reviewers that are working with the company answer and resolve car-related queries that are posted on the forum.
- To cut the long story short, CarDekho is more or less like a virtual car dealer, which is technically sound, updated, and most importantly, provides an effortless 360-degree experience to its customers.
CarDekho - Founders and team
Amit Jain and Anurag Jain are the founders of CarDekho. Amit Jain is the CEO and Co-Founder while Anurag Jain acts as the COO and Co-Founder at CarDekho. Umang Kumar has also been the co-founder of the company since CarDekho acquired Gaadi.com.
Amit Jain
- Amit Jain is an IIT Delhi alumnus from where he obtained a B Tech degree before going on to join Tata Consultancy Services. Leaving TCS after serving the company for a little more than a year, Amit joined Trilogy where he went to be a Product Manager. Jain next started with GirnarSoft as the CEO and Co-founder of the company, which he is still serving at the present. Amit Jain is also the CEO and Co-founder of CarDekho.
Anurag Jain
- Anurag Jain is also an IIT Delhi alumnus who has obtained an Integrated Master of Technology in Mathematics and Computing. Jain was a Senior Systems Consultant at i2 Technologies after which he joined Sabre Holdings as a Senior Operations Research Analyst. Anurag is currently serving as the COO and Co-founder at GirnarSoft.
- The founder and brother duo were both born on November 12th and completed their schooling at St Xavier’s School, Jaipur. Both of them later went on to IIT Delhi, where Amit opted for Civil Engineering whereas Anurag studied Mathematics and Computer Sciences. They had spent around 8 years working in the corporate sector with companies like TCS & Trilogy and that’s how Amit developed a liking for products and technology-related things.
Umang Kumar
- Umang Kumar was earlier the co-founder of Gaadi.com but ever since the latter has been acquired by CarDekho, Kumar has been associated with the team, where he has been serving as the Co-founder and President at CarDekho. Umang Kumar is an alumnus of Visvesvaraya Technological University, from where he obtained a BE degree in Computers. Kumar next went on to pursue a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian School of Business and then joined the Harvard Business School for the Naspers program in General Management, Strategy & Leadership. Before joining Gaadi Web as the co-founder and CEO, Umang founded another company, Accentium Web. During his career, Umang served a couple of other companies - 9.9 Mediaworx and ABP, where he served in key leadership positions.
- Along with them, the others in CarDekho's management include Mayank Gupta (CFO), Umesh Hora (SLT Member, South East Asia), Manish Wadhwa (CPO), Mayank Jain (CEO, New Auto), Ankit Agarwal (CEO, Insurance), Namit Jain (CEO Financial Services ), and Sharad Saxena (CEO, Used Cars).
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CarDekho - Startup Story | How was CarDekho Started?
- All of this started when due to some personal reasons, these brothers left their jobs and came back to their hometown. And instead of getting into their family business, this duo thought of starting their enterprise. Eventually, the founder duo concluded doing what they were best at. And this led them to launch GirnarSoft, an IT outsourcing company.
- They started by shooting emails to get bigger clients on board. But obviously, this was a tedious task and tested their perseverance. And after shooting billions of emails and making thousands of calls, they finally got on board their first client! Though this project didn’t pay them that much, it led to another project and building a chain of references. Following this, they started hiring and accumulating funds to start their project, and thus, CarDekho was born.
CarDekho - Startup Launch
- A lot of thought and conceptualizing went into building CarDekho after its launch. Even though the company had been launched, they kept their IT consultancy services ongoing because the founders wanted the primary income to keep flowing. CarDekho is one of those companies that take the consumer through the whole process, from the start to the end and during the process, to make sure that the customer is satisfied.
- Like all the other entrepreneurial ventures, this company too was a little slow in the beginning, but when it geared up the pace, the founders never looked back. And soon enough, its numbers did the talking when they roared success out loud to the world.
CarDekho - USP and Innovation
- CarDekho.com has launched many innovative features to ensure that users get an immersive experience of the car model before visiting a dealer showroom. These include a Feel The Car tool that gives 360-degree interior/exterior views with the sounds of the car and explanations of features with videos. It also offers features for searching and comparing cars by the makes, models, prices, features, and more. Furthermore, it also provides live offers and promotions in all cities.
- The platform also has used car classifieds wherein users can upload their cars for sale, and find used cars for buying from individuals and used car dealers.
- Along with the above consumer product features, CarDekho.com provides a rich array of tech-enabled tools to OE manufacturers and car dealers. These include apps for dealer sales executives to manage leads, cloud services for tracking sales performance, call tracker solutions, digital marketing support, a virtual online showroom, and outsourced lead management operational processes for taking consumers from inquiry to sale.
CarDekho - Mission and Vision
- CarDekho's mission is to digitize the auto ecosystem and make the vehicle ownership journey easy for customers. CarDekho envisions to become the largest personal mobility player in the Indian market.
CarDekho - Name, Logo and Tagline
- The naming of CarDekho has been done because the website aims to help users to browse through cars and car-related information. The tagline of CarDekho says, "Bharosa Kar Ke Dekho."
CarDekho - Growth and Revenue
- By January 2012, CarDekho had served 3.4 crore unique visitors being in the 4th year of its journey. By the end of 2012, the company had covered 2.5 crores, of unique visitors, in just one year, which came to be their all-time high. Within no time, CarDekho was at the top of the game when the portal scored a record 1.7 lakh used car sales across all the cities of India.
- CarDekho launched its iOS application, a month after the Android application was launched, which scored to attain 100,000 downloads in just one month. In 2014, its unique visitors on the web portal doubled and the revenues increased by 3x.
- By 2014, they were ruling the segment with pride and had a team of more than 600 employees! Following this, CarDekho launched BikeDekho, PriceDekho, MobileDekho, and many other similar portals under its umbrella.
- CarDekho claimed that it works actively with over 4,000 new auto dealerships and 3,000 used car dealers across India. In addition, it also stated that it has collaborated with more than 10 financial institutions and 18 insurance companies across the country to facilitate used car financing and insurance to provide a seamless experience for both buyers and sellers.
- CarDekho launched Gaadi by CarDekho in January 2019 after it acqui-hired Carbiqi when it forayed into the auction model. It started with the opening of about 8-10 Gaadi by CarDekho stores across the National Capital Region (NCR). CarDekho's stores had increased to around 60 operational stores across the country throughout the next year and a half.
- However, the company has now decided to move towards purchasing cars only after a home inspection, as of September 10, 2021. For this reason, CarDekho eventually closed more than 20 of its stores across the country.
- CarDekho has shut down numerous Gaadi by CarDekho stores that the company had across the country. The Gurgaon-based used car content and commerce platform had reportedly closed or is on the brink of closing anywhere around 21-25 of its stores, most of which are located in Delhi NCR, including Faridabad and Ghaziabad; Mumbai, Pune, and Bengaluru by October 2021. The main reason for shutting down the CarDekho stores is the company's shift to the home inspection model, where the company will go for purchasing cars only after a home inspection. CarDekho believes that this will be more efficient as its business model, as a result of the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis.
CarDekho launched Rupyy
- CarDekho has announced the launch of Rupyy, which will serve as a specialised financial services platform on April 26, 2022. This new platform will offer a whole new horizon of financing alternatives to the customers and retailers of automobiles. With the birth of Rupyy, CarDekho aims to empower customers with easy and convenient methods to apply for and receive approval for their auto-financing requirements. According to the CarDekho statement, Rupyy is an end-to-end digital platform that is designed to make the loan journey smooth and hassle-free for customers.
- Rupyy will work via a QR code-based onboarding process at vehicle dealerships and loan companies. This QR code-based process will guide the customers with a self-help path running video KYC, e-NACH, and e-Agreement technologies, which will help them approve their loans right at the point of sale within a few minutes.
Damini Bhandary
- CarDekho reported revenue of Rs 260 crores in the year that ended in March 2019, i.e., an increase of around 62% from the previous fiscal. The automobile marketplace also reported its other income that pushed its total income to more than Rs 936 crore in FY21.
CarDekho Revenue Breakdown
- The used-car selling platform purchases cars from the users of CarDekho and then sells them to car dealers across the country earning revenues. This revenue vertical showed a 67.4% growth in FY21, bringing around Rs 489 crore in revenues for the company from Rs 292 cr in FY20. Here's the complete revenue breakdown of CarDekho below and its comparison with the previous fiscal:
CarDekho Expenses Breakdown
- The company's purchasing of used cars from their owners stands as the most significant cost centre for the company in FY21, which grew by 66.2% to become nearly Rs 481 cr from Rs 289.4 cr, and has contributed to 37.6% of its annual expenses.
CarDekho - Business Model and Revenue Model
- Cardekho serves as a knowledge-based eCommerce website for car enthusiasts along with being an eCommerce platform for used cars.
The revenue model of CarDekho has been simple and clear-cut since day 1. Here are the primary mediums through which CarDekho earns its revenues from:
- AdSense
- Sponsored Advertisements
- Commissions from the manufacturers and dealers
- Affiliate marketing
- Lead generation
- Car insurances
CarDekho - Challenges
- CarDekho has faced numerous challenges to establishing itself in the market, which was earlier dominated by new cars and other disorganized players providing used cars offline. However, the COVID-19 onslaught is almost a blessing in disguise for the used-car marketplace because of the fear surrounding public vehicles and overcrowding.
CarDekho - Competitors
Other online marketplaces in India that deal with and cater to the same set of the target audience are:
- Droom
- Quikr
- Olx
- Cars24
- Mahindra First Choice Wheels
CarDekho - Awards
Some of the noteworthy awards that CarDekho received in its early days were:
- Best Automotive Website of 2009
- Best Car Website of 2012
- Most Popular Website of 2012
- Website of the Year India 2011 & 2012
CarDekho - Future Plans
- CarDekho is currently looking to expand its business to the Southeast Asian markets. The company is, according to the Co-founder and President Umang Kumar, aiming to establish its leadership in the automobile ecosystem of the region. CarDekho has already started its operations in Malaysia and Indonesia (under the name OTO). Furthermore, it has also started operating in the Philippines (through the acquisition of Carmudi).
- Mayank Gupta, CarDekho Group CFO, regarding the startup's growth plans, said, “With scale, leverage, efficiencies, and process improvements we are trying to contribute towards our total EBITDA level profitability and that is what we intend to achieve before IPO.”
- In terms of further acquisitions, he said, “We do look at opportunities that are relevant, any good asset to partner – anything revolving around auto tech solving customer challenges in a profitable manner like services of cars, rental, leasing or new technology like EVs would be relevant for us.”
- CarDekho has therefore kept its growth plans on track and expects great growth in the future.
FAQs
Who is CarDekho Founder?
- Amit Jain and Anurag Jain are the founders of CarDekho. Umang Kumar has also been the co-founder of the company since CarDekho acquired Gaadi.com.
Is Cardekho reliable? How are CarDekho cars?
- Yes, CarDekho is reliable. It is, in fact, one of the most trusted places for certified pre-owned cars. CarDekho cars are thoroughly inspected and come with a 6 months warranty along with a 7-day money-back guarantee.
What is CarDekho net worth?
- CarDekho has a net worth of $1.2 billion post the last funding round on October 13, 2021.
Who is Amit Jain?
- Amit Jain is the CEO and co-founder of CarDekho. Amit will soon be seen as a panellist in Shark Tank India Season 2.
What is CarDekho Revenue Model?
The primary mediums through which CarDekho earns its revenue are:
- AdSense
- Sponsored Advertisements
- Commissions from the manufacturers and dealers
- Affiliate marketing
- Lead generation
- Car insurances
How much funding has CarDekho raised?
- So far, CarDekho has raised a total of $497.5 million spread across 9 funding rounds to date.
