Spinny joins unicorn club with $283 million funding led by ADQ, Tiger Global, Avenir Growth

Mumbai: Used car retailing platform Spinny on Tuesday said it has raised $283 million, or about Rs 2,135 crore, in series E funding round led by Abu Dhabi-based ADQ, Tiger Global and Avenir Growth, which helped it join the unicorn club.

Existing investors Feroz Dewan’s, Arena Holdings and Think Investments, too, participated in the round that valued Spinny at “around $1.8 billion”, it said.

ET had first reported the fundraise on November 24.

The latest round includes a primary capital infusion of $250 million and a secondary sale of around $33 million by select angels and a few seed-stage investors, the company said in a release.

“The additional funding takes the overall funds raised by Spinny till date to more than $530 million,” it said.

Spinny had raised $108 million from Tiger Global and others in July in a round that valued it at $740 million. In April, it had raised $65 million in series C from US-based General Catalyst, Elevation Capital, Alteria Capital, Think Capital, and Fundamentum Partnership at a post-money valuation of $350 million.

According to the company, over the last 12 months, it has added initiatives such as Spinny360 interactive inventory viewing, an assured buyback programme, tenure-based flexible car ownership, online booking, and doorstep test drives, and delivery.

“The newly raised capital will be deployed towards further stepping up the customer experience, strengthening technology and product capabilities and building teams across functions,” it said.

“We set afoot to build Spinny with a customer-first approach – solving for lack of trust in car buying and selling experience with a highly personalised and detail-oriented approach,” said Niraj Singh, founder and CEO of Spinny. “Leveraging technology, our focus is to further strengthen our quality and experience control capabilities.”

Founded in 2015 by Singh, Mohit Gupta, and Ramanshu Mahaur, Spinny currently sells more than 3,000 used cars per month, three times what it did in January this year.

It has 23 car hubs that operate across 15 cities including Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Indore and Coimbatore.

According to industry estimates, about 4.5 million used or pre-owned cars were sold in India in 2019 and the market is growing at a 12% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR). For every new car sold, there are around 1.5 used cars sold in India (in the USA this ratio is around 2.3).

Spinny competes with other VC-backed firms such as Cars24, CarDekho and Droom, all of which have raised large rounds this year.