Shriram Automall buys online car marketplace BlueJack

Shriram Automall India, a sister concern of online automobile marketplaces CarTrade and CarWale, has acquired its peer BlueJack, operated by New Delhi headquartered Four Wheel Group India. 

Although the financial details of the deal were not disclosed, the acquisition will likely provide an exit route to BlueJack’s investors, including venture capital firm Westbridge Ventures, Singapore Angel Network, Quintillion Media, which is the owner of news platform The Quint, and some angels.

Founded in 2016 by Wishal Rampal and Salil Choudhary, BlueJack is a consumer-to-dealer platform that sells cars primarily to used car dealers. So far, it has conducted 2,500 transactions and evaluated over 10,000 cars, as per information on its website. 

Overall, the company raised a little over $1 million, according to data available on VCCEdge.

Through the acquisition, Shriram Automall targets to increase the yearly transactions volume to over 1.2 million cars worth over Rs 30,000 crore.

Shriram Automall, a subsidiary of Shriram Transport Finance Company, operates online and physical marketplace for commercial vehicles, passenger vehicles, construction and industrial equipment, tractors and agricultural equipment, three-wheelers and two-wheelers. The company also conducts over 1,000 events per month through its platform, as per information on its website. 

CarTrade and Shriram Automall are owned by MXC Solutions India.

In 2015, The company’s online vehicle transaction services CarTrade acquired CarWale from German media firm Axcel Springer.  

Other players in the online car market segment include Cars 24, Droom, CarDekho, Spinny, and Truebil. Online classifieds OLX and Quikr also operate in this space.

In the financial year, 2018-19 Droom posted losses at Rs 128 crore on revenue from operations of Rs 137 crore. Cars 24’s bottomline too ended in the red at Rs 326 crore on revenue of Rs 1,654 crore.