CarTrade

CarTrade.com

CarTrade.com is an automobile portal situated in India. Services offered on the website are car news, reviews, prices, technical specifications and comparison tools along with car financing and insurance information.
Type	Private
Industry	Automotive Industry
Founded	2010
Headquarters	Mumbai,India
Key people	Vinay Sanghi,[1] Rajan Mehra
Products	www.cartrade.com, CarTrade Exchange[2]
Number of employees	700+
Website	CarTrade.com

CarTrade.com is an automobile portal headquartered in Mumbai, India. As of November 2014, CarTrade.com received 3.8 million unique visitors a month, using services offered on the website such as car news, reviews, prices, technical specifications and comparison tools along with car financing and insurance information. Besides it's online presence, CarTrade.com has a physical presence across the country with over 4000 used car dealers spread across 80 cities pan India.^[3]

History

Founded in 2006 as CarTradeindia.com by Akshay Shankar and Nick Silderhuis, it was one of the automobile websites to bring the used car buy and sell business onto the digital medium. Ease of operations and a transparent solution were the main highlights. In 2009 a new startup, MotorExchange, founded by Vinay Sanghi and Rajan Mehra, acquired CarTradeIndia.com. MotorExchange subsequently raised series-A round of funding from Canaan Partners and other individual investors. A year later, series-B funds were raised from Canaan Partners and Epiphany Ventures, followed in 2012 by MotorExchange raising $13 million in series-C funding led by Tiger Global Management with participation from existing investor Canaan Partners. Subsequent to this last investment round, CarTradeIndia.com was rebranded to CarTrade.com which is now the main brand of the business.^[4] In 2014, the website raised investment of Rs.185 Cr (approximately USD30 million) from an affiliate of Warburg Pincus along with existing investors Canaan Partners and Tiger Global. The new investment were used to launch multiple products on the mobile platform, upgrade the platform, double its sales team and invest heavily in marketing initiatives.^[5]

Dealers

In mid-November 2014, CarTrade.com reported massive dealership expansion increasing its reach to 4000 dealers from across 80 cities pan-India. The website also registered a 15-fold increase in online traffic since its inception. The strong growth is also cited as one of the most important reasons for so many dealers opting for CarTrade.com.

References