Spinny, the pre-owned car retail platform, has raised $108 million Series D funding from Tiger Global, Avenir Growth, General Catalyst and others.
It includes primary capital infusion of $105 million and a secondary sale of $3 million by select angels and early-stage investors, the start-up said.
Tiger Global and Avenir Growth invested $75 million and $20 million, respectively. With this, the overall funds raised by Spinny since 2017 have reached $230 million (seed round of $1 million in 2017 by Blume Ventures and Simile Ventures; Series A of $13 million in March 2019 by Accel Partners and Elevation Capital; Series B of $44 million in March 2020 by The Fundamentum Partnership and KB Financial Group; and Series C of $65 million in February 2021 by General Catalyst, Arena Holdings and Think Investments).
Niraj Singh, founder & CEO of Spinny, told FE that this capital will be deployed towards stepping up customer experience, strengthening technology and product capabilities, deepening market penetration, and building teams across functions.
After the first lockdown last year, Spinny saw the share of first-time car buyers increasing from 35-40% (pre-pandemic) to 60-65%.
“Social distancing requirements due to the pandemic have pushed up used car sales. A large number of people who cannot afford a new car prefer used cars instead of taking public transport,” Singh said.
According to last month’s Frost & Sullivan study ‘Indian Pre-owned Car Market’, commissioned by Volkswagen India, the used car market size would touch 82 lakh units per year by FY25, up from 42 lakh units in FY20. However, of this 42-lakh market, only about 18% is organised.
“This signals a huge opportunity for players like Spinny,” Singh said. The Indian used-car market is highly fragmented. The various selling options are customer-to-customer, unorganised/independent used-car dealers, semi-organised used-car players, and organised (True Value, Mahindra First Choice, H Promise, etc, and online plus offline players such as OLX, Cars24 and Spinny).