Used car marketplace Truebil snaps up $500K funding from Kae Capital and Anupam Mittal
The marketplace for pre-owned cars, Truebil, has raised $500K from Kae Capital and angel investor Anupam Mittal, Founder and CEO of People Group. The company will use proceedings to develop a robust technology to enhance the end-user experience and further expand to other cities in the country.
Truebil aims to make pre-owned vehicle buying and selling experience more rewarding and uncomplicated while ensuring absolute transparency to the buyers. The platform offers features like free inspection, valuation, quick sell guarantee, vehicle buying consulting, smooth paper transfer, loan assistance and insurance among others.
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Floated in March 2015, Truebil is the brainchild of seven thinking minds -- Suraj Kalwani, Ravi Chirania, Shubh Bansal, Rakesh Raman, Ritesh Pandey, Shanu Vivek and Himanshu Singhal. Prior to Truebil, they had stints at companies like Housing, Fab and Fusion Charts.
At Truebil, each car undergoes an intensive inspection by the in-house auto engineers before Truebil team lists the verified cars on the platform.
Commenting on the funds raised, Shubh Bansal, Co-Founder and Chief of Marketing & Growth, Truebil, said, “The fundamental problems in buying a pre-owned car are the delayed processes and the hassle. With Truebil’s unique model, we are confident of bringing about a revolution in the used car market in the country and making the buying process a gratifying experience for the consumers. We have received encouraging responses from the users since the website’s launch in Mumbai and plan to use the current funding for innovating on the product side to give them a seamless experience.”
Witnessing a 15% growth every week with more than 1000 verified cars registered to its portal, 3.12 crore GMV sold and more than 156 cars sold so far, Truebil has marked its pan-Mumbai presence through a team of more than 50 individuals, including a team of in-house auto engineers.
Speaking about the thesis behind the investment, Navin Honagudi, Investment Director at Kae Capital, said, "Trubil lists verified cars which solves for trust while making a purchase decision. The team has strong experience in scaling marketplace and the vision with Truebil is to buy a used car at the click of a button."
Over the past one year, online automobile space has had a roller coaster ride. In the past 12 months, more than $100 million have been poured into India’s auto classifieds space. Besides VCs and angel investors, the space also drew funds from giants like Tata Group.
One hell of a ride: More than $100 million poured into India’s auto classifieds space
The company competes with Cardekho, Cartrade, Carwale, horizontal classifieds majors, OLX and Quickr, and Sandeep Aggarwal-led venture, Droom. The Gurgaon-based startup has shown stellar growth so far in a short span.
Online automobile classifieds space isn’t disrupted like product based e-commerce in India. And it has immense potential for startups focusing on real pain points and innovations. It would be interesting to watch how startups like Droom and Truebil evolve in the future. Stay tuned for more updates in this space.
