Droom raises funds from BEENEXT, Digital Garage, others

Online automobile marketplace Droom today said it has raised an undisclosed amount from BEENEXT, Digital Garage and other existing investors to expand its presence in the South East Asian countries like Indonesia.
However, according to sources, Droom has raised nearly Rs 200 crore in this round of funding.
The company will also use the proceeds of the Series B funding to expand its domestic operations and strengthen its technology platform.
"The amount raised for the new round of funding is significantly higher than Series A that we raised last year," Droom founder and CEO Sandeep Aggarwal told reporters here.
He declined to comment on the funding raised and the valuation of the company.

Previously, Droom has raised seed funding of USD 1.5 million and USD 4 million in May and October 2014, respectively, followed by Series A round of Rs 100 crore in June last year.

Droom, which holds no inventory itself, facilitates sale of new and used cars and two-wheelers and also offers services through its platform. It has listings from across 142 cities in India.
The company will expand its operations to Indonesia in the third quarter of the fiscal, followed by other countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore, Aggarwal told PTI.
"These markets put together are smaller than India but present a huge opportunity as these are underpenetrated. We expect about 15 per cent of our gross annualised revenue run rate to come from international operations by December 2017," he said.

On the Indian market, Aggarwal said that about 0.3 per cent of the USD 125 billion auto market in India is online.
"India would remain the large part of our business. Currently, our gross annualised revenue run rate is about Rs 1,000 crore, which we expect will touch Rs 3,000-3,500 crore by March 2017," he said.
The company is looking at expanding its presence to 250 cities by March 2017, he added.
Droom is also looking at hiring about 90 people to strengthen its product and engineering operations as well as for managing international operations.
"By March next year, we will have about 250 people from the current 160 people. About 50 per cent of these will be for the product and engineering team, while we will have about four-member teams for each country (international operations)," he said.