In what is seen as the largest consolidation in the car sales segment, online car portal CarTrade has acquired rival CarWale for an undisclosed amount. Announcing the acquisition, CarTrade’s founder and chief executive Vinay Sanghi said, “We firmly believe that the combination of CarTrade and CarWale will further strengthen our leadership in the new and used cars space. We can now direct our joint resources towards developing better products to enhance user experience.”
While CarTrade focuses on used cars, CarWale’s strength is in new vehicles. The merged entity could become a leading player in both new and used car segments.
The two online platforms would have over 32 million combined visits in a month, work with about 9,000 new and used car dealer partners and connect car manufacturers with car buyers, a statement from CarTrade said. The two platforms list over 225,000 used cars for sale.
CarTrade was founded by Vinay Sanghi and Rajan Mehra in 2009. Vinay is a former CEO of Mahindra First Choice while Rajan is a former country head of eBay India. Its investors include Warburg Pincus, JP Morgan, March Capital and Epiphany ventures. Some unique features of the portal include used car price information, certified used cars, on road dealer prices and expert reviews that empower buyers and sellers to choose the most suitable vehicles at the most affordable prices. It has over 1,400 employees.
Its rival CarWale was launched much earlier in 2005 by Mohit, Gaurav, Tufail and Arun. It launched India’s first Used Car Price Guide way back in 2006. In 2010, it became India’s single largest source of car sales and was recognised as one of the world’s top 200 innovative IT companies by Red Herring.
[With inputs from Navin Bhatia]