With $60m fresh funding in the tank, Carro aims to be the region’s top auto market

The Carro team / Photo credit: Carro

Money is pouring into Southeast Asia’s used-car market. Startups using tech to make second-hand vehicle sales more efficient have secured big funding in recent months, including multi-million-dollar raises for Carsome, Carmudi, and BeliMobilGue.

Carro, a Singapore-based online marketplace for used cars and auto finance, has become the latest name on that list.

It announced today it has raised US$60 million in a series B round co-led by B Capital Group, Insignia Ventures Partners, and SoftBank Ventures Korea.

B Capital partner and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin will join Carro’s board along with Insignia founder and ex-Sequoia Capital partner, Tan Yinglan, and SoftBank Ventures Korea partner Sean Lee.

The family office of IDG Ventures India founder Manik Arora joined the round. Existing investors Alpha JWC, Golden Gate Ventures, Singtel Innov8, and Venturra Capital also participated.

Carro’s online marketplace uses a mix of human expertise and proprietary pricing algorithms to inspect and evaluate vehicles. It claims that this improves the used-car trade by giving buyers and sellers a pricing system and transactional framework they can trust.

The startup also provides buyers with after-sale care, including roadside assistance, as well as lending and insurance options through its Genie Financial Services unit, which it claims is already profitable.

Carro said that its vehicle marketplace handled transactions worth more than US$250 million last year. Its auto financing platform Genie processed US$100 million in loan requests, building up a loan book of almost US$40 million in its first year.

Founder and CEO Aaron Tan said that the new funding will be used to “double down on our online marketplaces and financing in emerging markets.”

Heavy traffic

Operating in Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand, Carro faces a number of competitors throughout the region. Malaysia’s Carsome – which similarly offers an end-to-end platform including vehicle inspection and valuation – raised US$19 million in series B funding in January, with the goal of further expanding its presence in Indonesia and Thailand. Like Carro, Vietnam’s Caramo focuses on the C2C segment.

This is also the case for online classifieds sites such as Carmudi – which secured US$10 million funding in January to for market growth and tech development – and multiple-category Carousell, which confirmed the close of its US$85 million series C round earlier today.

In January, used-car marketplace BeliMobilGue – a Jakarta-based joint venture of Indonesian VC firm Intudo Ventures and Germany’s Frontier Car Group – banked US$3.7 million in pre-series A funding, which it will invest in regional expansion.

Another rival for Carro is Malaysia-based iCar Asia, which runs a network of auto sales portals across its home country, Indonesia, and Thailand.