PropTiger co-founder Prashan Agarwal floats used-car marketplace 19miles

Prashan Agarwal, who had co-founded online real estate services portal PropTiger, has floated a new startup that would act as a curated peer-to-peer transaction marketplace for buying and selling used cars.

Chistened 19miles, the newly started firm has also secured Rs 2.5 crore in funding from an unnamed angel investor, as per a press statement

19miles, which is presently operational in Delhi, plans to utilise the funding to hire new talent (in product and technology) and for expansion into few more cities, Agarwal said in the statement.

19miles has put in place a mechanism to conduct a thorough inspection of the cars before they are listed on the website. A selling price is determined for the vehicle based on parameters such as the year of manufacture and distance traveled, among others.

Thereafter, the seller is given a fixed selling price which is much higher than dealer prices, and the startup offers to buy the car if it does not get any taker within 30 days.

"The cars come with 160 pt certification, seven days money-back guarantee, a three month 4000 km warranty and at a price lower than what the dealers have to offer. This is a win-win for both the sellers and the buyers," the statement said.

Harvard Business School alumnus Agarwal, who had started PropTiger along with partner Dhruv Agrawala in 2011, had exited the real estate portal in May this year. Meanwhile, another P2P mobile marketplace for buying and selling used cars, Zoomo said today that it has secured around $5 million in its first major round of funding from its existing investor SAIF Partners.

In this space, other major players include CarDekho, CarTrade and CarWale.

In January this year, CarDekho – owned and operated by Jaipur-based Girnar Software Pvt Ltd – secured $50 million in a funding round led by Hillhouse Capital Management, Tybourne Capital Ltd and Sequoia Capital. Later in February, it further raised an undisclosed amount from Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons Ltd.

Besides, online classified portals such as Quikr and OLX that list everything from mobile phones to real estate also have a significant share of the online pre-owned car market.

"Car penetration per 1000 people in India is 20 times less than developed markets. And used car market is too difficult to navigate for the middle-class Indian consumer. These dynamics make the used car market perfectly ripe for innovation and 19miles is addressing the pain points of the consumers by hand-holding both buyer and seller through the entire transaction," said Agarwal.

Agarwal had earlier launched an online real estate brokerage business called Allcheckdeals.

Last year, News Corp had acquired a 25 per cent stake in PropTiger for $30 million. in June, the global media conglomerate hiked its stake in PropTiger to 30 per cent for an undisclosed amount.

In March, News Corp acquired VCCircle Network, which operates this news website.