Droom, India’s first and largest transactional platform for the automobile industry, on Thursday announced that the company has just raised $30 million in Series D, led by Toyota Tsusho Corporation (member, Toyota group) and co-led by Digital Garage of Japan. They were joined by Ellison Investments, an Asia-based investment manager, as well as many existing investors and a number of prominent institutional investors and family offices from China, Hong Kong and South East Asia.
The funds will be used to further strengthen Droom’s domination in the online automobiles marketplace segment in India, where it currently owns a nearly 70% market share, as well as to make its ecosystem service tools more scalable and to expand its international presence, said a press release. The tech-led platform will also invest heavily in further developing its machine learning and AI capabilities and build 100x larger scale.
Droom also signed an MoU with Toyota Tsusho to expand in SE Asia. It aims to double its gross merchandise value (GMV) to $1.4 billion by the end of 2018 and $3.5 billion by 2019. It plans to go for an IPO by the end of 2019.
Sandeep Aggarwal, founder & CEO, Droom, said, “We have seen tremendous growth over the past three-and-half years in terms of adoption by buyers/sellers, number of categories and listings, geographical presence, and GMV/transactions. This partnership will play a major role in Droom’s journey ahead.”