Southeast Asia’s leading integrated car e-commerce platform, Carsome Group, has closed a new round of funding, bringing its total raise to approximately US$200 million.
The round saw participation from existing investors, including 65 Equity Partners, Seatown Private Capital Master Fund, Qatar Investment Authority, Gobi Partners, and Asia Partners.
EvolutionX Debt Capital, a growth-stage debt financing platform that provides an alternative source of financing to technology companies in Asia, also co-invested.
Carsome aims to digitise the region’s used car industry across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore. Together with subsidiaries iCar Asia, WapCar and CarTimes, Carsome provides end-to-end solutions to consumers and used car dealers across the decision funnel, from car content consumption, car inspection, and ownership transfer to financing and other ancillary services.
Also Read: Carsome acquires WapCar, AutoFun to strengthen automotive content strategy
It claims to sell over 150,000 cars annually and serves more than 15 million unique customers monthly across its diverse online and offline channels in the region. In addition to achieving over 30 per cent growth in revenue and reaching profitability, its ecosystem companies have also contributed to a 60 per cent reduction in the group’s customer acquisition cost.
Currently, the group has more than 4,000 employees.
In Q1 2023, Carsome hit an operational profitability milestone for the first time on the back of significant growth in trade margin, which doubled compared to the same period last year. Over 80 per cent of the trade margin came from transaction margins.
In 2022, the group announced its revenue grew 250 per cent to US$1.5 billion, with the newly established regional retail line, Carsome Certified, contributing 35 per cent.
Carsome Service Centres (CSC) have seen more than 100 per cent month-over-month growth since its launch at the end of last year. They are expected to reach nationwide coverage in Malaysia by the end of Q3 2023.
Co-Founder and Group CEO Eric Cheng said: “We have spent the last eight years building a more trusted way for customers to transact within Southeast Asia’s used car industry. Our comfortable liquidity position and strong backing from both existing and new investors place us on solid footing to deliver the world’s first integrated car ownership ecosystem, going beyond just buying and selling cars to include ancillary services across the whole ownership lifecycle.”
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