Droom raises Series B funding from Beenext, Digital Garage and others

Online marketplace for used automobiles Droom has raised an undisclosed amount in its Series B funding round from investors led by venture capital fund Beenext and Japanese internet company Digital Garage.

Lightbox, Beenos and other existing investors also participated in this round.

Teruhide Sato, founder and former CEO of Japanese e-commerce company and investor firm Beenos Inc (formerly Netprice), had set up venture capital fund Beenext in September 2015 targeting investments in early-stage companies in India, South East Asia, Japan and the US.

The new funds will be used for expanding to newer markets, hiring more people, developing the technology platform, it said in a statement.

Droom Technology Pvt. Ltd, which runs the platform, raised Rs 100 crore ($16 million) in Series A funding from venture capital firm Lightbox and Japanese e-commerce firm Beenos in July last year.

"We have been witnessing tremendous growth over the past 16 months in terms of adoption by sellers, number of categories and listings, and geographical presence in 142 cities across India, and GMV/transactions," said Sandeep Aggarwal, founder and CEO, Droom.

Aggarwal founded Droom in April 2014. He had earlier founded online marketplace ShopClues, which too was backed by Beenos. Aggarwal has also backed startups such as Shopsity, which connects offline retailers to customers, besides mobile wholesale marketplace Wydr.

In the online used automobiles selling space, Droom competes with players such as Truebil, Zoomo, CarDekho (which acquired Gaadi.com), Carwale and CarTrade in addition to horizontal people-to-people platforms such as OLX and Quikr.

In January this year, online jewellery retailer Melorra had raised $5 million (around Rs 33.4 crore) from venture capital firm Lightbox Ventures.

Beenext had recently funded WorkIndia, a job portal for blue-collar workers. Beenext and Digital Garage, along with Beenos, had recently participated in the Series B funding round of Bangalore-based NoBroker Technologies Solutions Pvt Ltd, which runs a peer-to-peer property listings business for renting homes under NoBroker.com.

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