[Funding alert] Online used car retailing startup Spinny raises $65 M in Series C round led by General Catalyst

Gurugram-based online used car retailing platform, Spinny, on Thursday announced that it has raised $ 65 million in Series C round led by silicon valley based venture capital firm, General Catalyst - early backers of Airbnb, Stripe, Snapchat, Vroom, Cazoo, etc.

Other new investors in the round include Feroz Dewan’s Arena Holdings, and Think Investments. In addition to these, the round also saw participation from existing investors Elevation Capital, the Fundamentum Partnership, and others.

The additional funding takes the overall funds raised by Spinny till date to more than $120 million.

According to the official statement, the newly raised capital will be deployed towards improving customer experience, expanding in new markets, strengthening technology and product capabilities, launching new business categories, and building teams across functions. A portion of the proceeds from the round will also be utilised to provide exits to few seed and pre seed-stage investors of the company, it stated.

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How Spinny is re-defining the pre-owned car market through its platform

While the auto market saw a dip in sales volumes during the COVID-19 lockdown, the lifting of the lockdown restrictions saw a major boost in car sales due to a change in personal transport preferences.

Keen to capitalise on this strong tailwind, Spinny started operations in four more cities - Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, and Ahmedabad - in Jan'21, taking its presence to the top eight cities of India (including existing cities - Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune). 

Speaking about the new development, Niraj Singh, Founder and CEO, Spinny said,

“With the changing needs and expectations of the customer, Spinny’s full-stack capability allows us the control to set industry benchmarks in terms of a transparent and simple car buying and selling experience. We are super excited to see our existing investor General Catalyst double down on their conviction and lead this round."

"That's great validation and support for the work we are doing. We welcome onboard our new investors Arena Holdings and Think Investments, and thank our existing investors Elevation Capital (prev. SAIF Partners), Accel Partners, the Fundamentum Partnership, and others for their belief in our vision and tremendous support in building the platform.”

Founded in 2015 by Niraj Singh, Mohit Gupta, and Ramanshu Mahuar, Spinny is a tech-enabled pre-owned car platform. Its online-to-offline (O2O) model allows customers to discover cars online on Spinny's website, and make the final purchase offline at a Spinny Car Hub.

In March last year, the Gurugram-based platform had raised $43.7 million in a Series B financing round from a host of investors led by Fundamentum Partnership, a growth capital fund backed by Nandan Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal.

Commenting on the investment, Adam Valkin, General Partner, General Catalyst said,

“At General Catalyst, we constantly seek out the best companies and the best entrepreneurs, wherever they are in the world. The used car market in India is huge and ripe for reinvention. We believe Spinny is uniquely positioned to tap this opportunity--given their compelling leadership and their real market momentum. As long time investors, we've been impressed by how Spinny is reinventing every part of the buying process - injecting trust and safety into every aspect of the customer experience.”

“Spinny has become India's most trusted used car brand and is on its way to becoming India's largest as well. It's heartening to hear customers describe the experience of buying a used car from Spinny being better than that of buying a new car. This has been made possible because of Niraj and the entire Spinny team's customer obsession and relentless execution. We are privileged to be their early partners and super excited to double down in this round,” added Mukul Arora, Partner, Elevation Capital (prev. SAIF Partners).