Chinese secondhand car platform Cheyipai raises $110M series D

China’s Cheyipai, a secondhand car trading and ecommerce platform, announced yesterday that it has completed a US$110 million series D round. The round was led by Chinese tech company Renren, and other investors included Sequoia Capital, Matrix China, Morningside Ventures and CITIC Capital.

Cheyipai is China’s largest online secondhand car trading platform. To maintain that position, the company operates a number of O2O services, like offline car inspector teams who check the quality of cars listed on the site. It is those O2O services that Cheyipai plans to expand and strengthen with this latest cash infusion.

Cheyipai has been able to raise massive investments over the past year (the company netted a US$50 million series C round in February of 2014) in large part because of the accelerating growth of China’s used car market. A decade ago, selling secondhand cars was difficult in China. At the time, many people saw cars as a wealth and status symbol, so buying a used car was missing the point. But China’s middle class has grown significantly, as has its appetite for cars, and as the belief in cars as a status symbol fades, interest in secondhand cars has grown. Now, the used car business is booming.

Cheyipai’s emphasis on improving its O2O services – and specifically its inspectors – also makes a lot of sense. One of the biggest problems with buying a used car in China currently is that sellers can sometimes be dishonest about a car’s history, and particularly its accident record. Used car shoppers in China are like car shoppers everywhere: interested in finding a good deal, but not at the cost of safety. Cheyipai’s inspector program has the potential to help the company achieve further growth by giving car shoppers the peace of mind they need to make a purchase.