Used cars marketplace Spinny raises Series B round led by Fundamentum

Yellow Drive Technologies, the Delhi-based company that operates used cars marketplace Spinny, has raised $43.7 million (approximately Rs 315 crore) in a Series B funding round led by The Fundamentum Partnership. 

US-based venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners, and South Korea-based KB Financial Group joined the round as new investors. Returning investors Accel, SAIF Partners and Alteria Capital participated in the round.

Fundamentum partner Ashish Kumar will join the Spinny board following the investment.

Gurugram-headquartered Fundamentum is a growth capital investment firm promoted by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal, co-founder of formerly active venture capital firm Helion Venture Partners. It launched a $100-million fund in July last year. 

“I like full stack businesses that are building competitive differentiation as they scale. The Fundamentum team was impressed with Spinny team's ability to use technology to solve operational friction in the business, and thereby build a sustainable advantage,” Nilekani said in a statement.

The Series B round takes the company’s overall funding to $58.28 million till date, according to data available with VCCEdge.

The significantly large Series B round comes less than a year after the company raised $13.2 million in its Series A round of funding led by venture capital firms Accel and SAIF Partners. One of Spinny’s early backers, Indian Angel Network (IAN), booked a full exit from the company with the Series A round.

Founded by Niraj Singh, Mohit Gupta and Ramanshu Mahaur in 2015, Spinny is a technology-enabled full stack pre-owned car platform. It works on an online-to-offline (O2O) model where customers can discover cars on its website and make the final purchase offline at the physical car hubs the company operates. Users can view an assortment of cars available for sale on its website, filter based on their requirement and schedule a test drive at the nearest offline hub. It also helps arrange financing via tie-ups with banking partners, manage paperwork including free registration certificate (RC) transfer and offers doorstep delivery of cars.

“With the increase in disposable income levels and evolving consumer demand, we want to be the market leader in the organized used car market segment, and provide our customers a completely trustworthy and hassle-free buying experience,” Spinny co-founder Singh said.

Spinny currently operates nine car hubs across Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. 

It will use the Series B capital to invest in technology, strengthen business teams, enhance customer experience and expand to newer cities, said in a statement.

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

The sector has seen significant investor traction in recent months. Droom has raised over $125 million over six rounds of funding so far, Cars24 has secured $200 million till date, and CarDekho has raised $215 million. 

Cars24, Droom and OLX spent most of financial year 2018-2019 spending generous amounts of cash, even as the losses piled up and growth in the overall automotive market slowed down. The three companies together put Rs 2,652 crore to work during the year, with each spending significantly higher this year on advertising and marketing in a bid to grab market share.