Why Cars24 is the only used car on the unicorn track

Just two months ago, five-year-old Cars24 became India’s first unicorn in the used cars space, despite older rivals with similar business models snapping closely at its heels

The used car market had picked up, growing bigger than the new cars market after the double whammy of demonetisation and GST

Cars24 found itself in a sweet spot; its revenue grew 152% and 80% in two years; losses narrowed as well for 2020

But so did its competitors; those such as CarDekho and CarTrade also saw their revenues grow, raising money in multiple funding rounds

Business plunged when Covid struck, but some skilful manouevering and diversification on Cars24’s part attracted investors

In November 2020, Cars24 pulled off something most startups can only dream of. Within just five years of its inception, the used cars startup achieved unicorn status, buttressed by a $200 million funding round in a pandemic year. Perhaps more impressively, it was an inbound investment. Hong Kong-based DST Global, the investor that led the round, approached Cars24.

It’s certainly cause for celebration, but Cars24’s co-founder and chief financial officer Ruchit Agarwal only sounds tired.

“If someone had told us in 2015 that we’d go through all these crises, we wouldn’t have entered the market in the first place,” he tells The Ken.

AUTHOR

Bhumika Khatri

Bhumika covers e-commerce, consumer internet, and everything startup for The Ken in Delhi. In her previous stint at Inc42, she spent two and a half years writing about a breadth of startups and topics. A commerce graduate, Bhumika completed her postgraduate in journalism from the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media, Bengaluru. You can reach her at [email protected]

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