General Catalyst leads Series C funding in Spinny; seed, pre-seed investors to exit

Pre-owned cars platform Spinny today said it has raised $65 million (Rs 481.7 crore) as part of its Series C round from new and existing investors. 

Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm General Catalyst, early backer of startups such as Airbnb, Stripe and Snapchat, led the round, said Spinny in a statement. 

Feroz Dewan’s Arena Holdings and Think Investments also joined as new investors, it added. 

Existing investors Elevation Capital (formerly SAIF Partners) and Fundamentum Partnership participated in this round. 

With this funding, Spinny has raised a total of more than $120 million. 

A portion of the fresh capital will be used to facilitate exits for a few seed and pre-seed-stage investors. Money will also be deployed to launch new business categories and build teams across functions. 

Spinny, operated by Yellow Drive Technologies Pvt Ltd, was founded in 2015 by Neeraj Singh, Mohit Gupta and Ramanshu Mahuar. 

It has 16 car hubs that operate across eight regions -- Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, and Ahmedabad. 

The Series C fundraise comes after Spinny acquired rival Truebil in a cash-and-equity deal in August last year. This came just months after the pre-owned cars platform had raised $43.7 million in its Series B funding led by Fundamentum Partnership. 

Prior to this, Spinny raised around $13.2 million in a Series A round led by Elevation Capital and Accel in 2019. 

The platform raised $1 million (around Rs 6.4 crore) in a seed round led by Blume Ventures in June 2017.  

Adam Valkin, general partner, General Catalyst, said that the used car market in India is huge and ripe for reinvention.   

"We believe Spinny is uniquely positioned to tap this opportunity given their compelling leadership and their real market momentum," he added. 

The used cars segment in India got a boost after the government lifted lockdown restrictions to contain the pandemic. 

In November last year, Cars24 raised $200 million (Rs 1,480.9 crore) as part of its Series E funding round. This catapulted the firm to the unicorn club featuring startups with a valuation of at least $1 billion. 

In June last year, CarTrade.com raised Rs 321 crore ($42.5 million) from two existing investors.