Carro is a Singapore-based wholesale automotive marketplace. The company has been wanting to expand their business across Southeast Asia. Therefore, the fund they get from its series B round makes that ambition possible. Carro buys Jualo as its first move to expand its business.
The company raised an additional USD 30 million in its ongoing Series B round. New investors include SoftBank Ventures in Asia. Other than that, it also gets government-linked global investors. Their new government link investor includes Export Development Bank of Iran (EDBI), Dietrich Foundation, NCORE Ventures, and Hanwha Asset Management.
Since its launch three years ago, Carro has raised over US$100 million from investors.
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The company aims to use the fresh funds to accelerate its expansion across Southeast Asia. The expansion starts with the acquisition of Indonesia’s (Customer to Customer) C2C marketplace Jualo.
Acquisition of Jualo
Carro buys Jualo with the capital it has raised. Jualo is an Indonesia-based consumer-to-consumer marketplace platform. The platform has successfully attracted over 4 million users per month. Besides, it also has facilitated over USD 1 billion in transactions in 2018, alone.
The platform helps private and professional sellers to trade new and used goods. It covers over 300 categories including cars, property, fashion, and electronics across all 34 provinces in Indonesia. It also allows users to post job advertisements. Moreover, the platform also provides its users with the comfort and safety of an Escrow payment feature for the shippable items.
Jualo established in January 2014. Its list of investors includes venture funds like Alpha JWC Ventures, Openspace Ventures, and Kejora Ventures amongst others.
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Today, Carro operates in over 30 cities across Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. Consequently, Carro’s expansion into Thailand and Indonesia in the past year has seen a 100% month-on-month growth in both markets.
Besides, the acquisition of Jualo.com will further boost the reach of its platform in Southeast Asia. Its biggest competitor is now the Naspers-backed OLX, a classifieds site that’s used for property and car listings, among other things. However, Carro remains positive that its latest acquisition will put it above its competitors.
