Last fortnight, CarDekho’s sister company InsuranceDekho completed the acquisition of IRSS, hot on the heels of a $150M fundraise in startup winter.
Siblings Amit and Anurag were born on the same day, but two years apart. Tons of similarities between them – both of them are graduates of IIT Delhi, both shunned their father’s jewellery business and both put their family first.
When they returned to Jaipur in 2007 to take care of their grandparents, they knew that the family business was not for them.
They tapped on their old bosses and landed software development gigs. Their revenue in the first year? ₹10M. The next logical step was to double down on this business. But the brothers were no strangers to India’s burgeoning consumer story.
They reinvested profits into a chain of experiments – online astrology, silver jewellery, virtual stock trading, and eventually car sales. Only one worked out, and CarDekho was born.
Just like Zomato, CarDekho started by digitising information about cars. By 2010, it had the largest traffic online for cars. Carmakers started advertising on their portal. Soon, they were selling leads for car purchases.
By 2021, 85% of Indians would visit their website, before purchasing a car. But CarDekho wasn’t satisfied being just a used car sales platform. It expanded to insurance, with InsuranceDekho.
CarDekho became a unicorn. Amit appeared on Shark Tank, and took on the role of mentoring aspiring founders.
Along with its sister concerns, will it create a unicorn conglomerate?