Carro raises US$60 million to tap Asia-Pacific demand for used Japanese cars; Cool Japan Fund leads funding
CEO of online car marketplace adds that more partnerships between it and Japanese automobile brands are coming to the region
[SINGAPORE] South-east Asia’s largest online used-car marketplace Carro raised US$60 million in a funding round led by Cool Japan Fund, said the company on Wednesday (Sep 17).
The investment is aimed at helping Temasek and GIC-backed Carro bolster the demand for used Japanese cars in the Asia-Pacific region.
Cool Japan Fund is a Japanese public-private fund founded in 2013. Backed by the Japanese government, it aims to drive growth of the country’s economy by increasing demand for its products abroad.
Carro said that it expects overall demand for used cars and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) from Japan to grow.
This will be driven by an anticipated economic expansion, the rise of the middle-income population and government subsidies for EVs in countries such as Indonesia and Thailand.
Conventional petrol-electric hybrids operate solely on petrol, but recuperate kinetic energy from driving and store it in a battery, thus increasing efficiency.
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PHEVs operate on a similar concept, but they have a larger battery that can be charged from external sources and so can cover longer distances on purely electric power.
Carro co-founder and chief executive officer Aaron Tan said: “We are confident we can increase the market share of Japanese PHEVs in time to come.”
“You can look (forward to) greater partnership between Japanese brands and Carro across the region,” he told The Business Times, adding that Cool Japan Fund is facilitating Carro’s access to Japanese car brands that it previously could not.
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Tan did not elaborate on the specific Japanese brands that Carro will work with, but said that it does not mean that the company will become an authorised distributor for those brands.
“There are many ways to partner. Authorised distribution is one way, but brands like Audi and Tesla are going direct-to-consumer. So a partnership with a platform or marketplace makes much more sense,” he noted.
Carro operates in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan.
The unicorn startup transacts more than 100,000 units of new and used vehicles per year across its seven markets.
Headquartered in Singapore, it has raised over S$700 million so far from several sovereign funds and the SoftBank Vision Fund.
Tan last week said that his company was weighing a dual listing, with plans to expand into Australia and to complete two to three acquisitions in as early as the next quarter.
The company was eyeing a US initial public offering at a valuation of more than US$3 billion, reported Reuters in August.
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