Singapore based car marketplace Carro, announced this morning the acquisition of funding of $5.3 million from a cohort of investors led by Venturra Capital. It also witnessed participation from Alpha JWC and Skystar Ventures (Indonesia), Singtel Innov8 and Golden Gate Ventures (Singapore) and GMO Ventures (Japan).
Launched in November last year, the startup plans to expand their business in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand by the end of this year. Aaron Tan, CEO of Carro was heard saying that though they haven’t officially announced but the work has already begun in the countries and the team has been hiring staff for the operations.
Aaron mentioned that they are ‘on track’ with their plans to bring the brand to over 350 million people in the nations and further added,
This round of funding underscores our commitment to provide car buyers and sellers a greater degree of trust and transparency around the region.
Founded by five car enthusiasts, the marketplace is based on various technologies like data analytics, machine learning, visualization and product management. The revenue model for Carro depends on the transactions where it charges S$250 for per car sold via its platform. Also, the platform charges a fixed commission from the financial institutions like banks on every transaction. Before this round, it had raised SG$1 Million in seed round in November 2015.
Venturra Capital Managing Partner Stefan Jung said,
Team Carro impress us with the technical ability, great ambition, and the traction they earn today. Aaron and his team have built a platform that is much better, for buyers and sellers, rather than the existing platform.
The team believes that the tech based approach they have implemented attributes its success. Another worth noting point Aaron thinks is the direct contribution of management team to product development which remains one of the main reasons behind the launching of over 3 new featured products within last 6 months.
Included in the announcement this time was the launch of a mobile application Carro Workshop that provides car owners recommendations of workshops related to the types of services needed repairs, rating and reputation of the workshop, and the location.
Carro claims recorded growth of more than 30% each month, and hopes to get the total value of the service reach SG$ 100 million by the end of this year. Ordinary Marketplace merely offer to sell, while the latest trends in the sector startup trying to go one step further to help sellers and buyers get the best prices and products. Aaron added that the main challenge is to overcome this issue, and convince users that there is a better way of selling apart from making a deal through traditional dealers.
He added that in the longer run, more than the number in revenue field, what will matter is the fact that Carro has been successful in providing a new alternate way to the customers and saving them millions of dollars of the dealership fee.
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