Pre-owned car marketplace HopCar merges with Spinny

Online pre-owned automobile marketplace HopCar has merged its operations with bigger rival Spinny.

The merged entity will continue to operate under Spinny's brand name with the four co-founders of HopCar becoming core team members at Spinny. The merger allows Delhi-based Spinny to further strengthen its position in the Delhi-NCR region and bring greater efficiency to its operations in Bangalore. The company is looking to expand into tier I and tier II cities by the end of 2016.

"The used car market is a very fragmented segment with many different players tackling the same issues in their own ways. HopCar was one such player which was working on very similar lines," said Niraj Singh, CEO, Spinny, in a statement.

Queries sent to Spinny and HopCar on the details of the merger did not elicit any response till the time of filing this report.

Spinny offers doorstep delivery of pre-owned cars besides financing and hassle-free paper work. The startup was founded in 2015 by Singh.

Gurgaon-based HopCar was established in August 2015 by Arijit Biswas, Rahul Thakur, Anish Karan and Rahul Anand.

"Our experience in the used car market has shown us that the issues in the market were too great to solve alone. Spinny's vision synced naturally with our own and we look forward to working with Spinny and their team to deliver a satisfactory consumer experience," said Biswas.

Spinny had earlier raised an undisclosed amount of investment from Outbox Ventures.

In the online used automobiles selling space, other players include Truebil, Zoomo, CarDekho, Carwale and CarTrade in addition to horizontal people-to-people platforms such as OLX and Quikr.

Automobile classifieds portal CarTrade had acquired rival CarWale from German media conglomerate Axel Springer in November 2015. Earlier in September 2015, Jaipur-based Girnar Software Pvt Ltd, the company behind auto portal CarDekho and BikeDekho, had acquired auto portal Zigwheels for an undisclosed amount.

Earlier this month, Gurgaon-based Droom, an online marketplace for used automobiles, raised an undisclosed amount in its Series B funding round from investors led by venture capital fund Beenext and Japanese internet company Digital Garage.

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