June 15, 2021 beaconvc

Beacon VC joins automotive marketplace unicorn Carro’s $360M Series C round

Photo Credit: Carro

Carro, Southeast Asia’s largest automotive marketplace, today announced that it has raised US$360 million in a Series C funding round, making it the first automotive marketplace unicorn in Southeast Asia. Beacon VC (the corporate venture arm of Thailand’s Kasikornbank) joined the round to support Kasikornbank’s drive to provide better financial services to consumers across Thailand.

“This is a huge milestone for us. We are grateful for the strong support from our investors, which reaffirms our belief in the transformative power of AI in the automotive industry to deliver an exceptional customer experience. As digitalization shapes the global landscape through new consumer habits and business practices, it is a very exciting time for an end-to-end online car marketplace like Carro.” said Aaron Tan, CEO, and Founder of Carro.

Carro will use the funds to strengthen its market position and expand its retail offering across Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore – markets that have seen significant growth in the past year. Carro will also enhance its portfolio of financial services by expanding beyond in-house loan financing, as well as accelerate development of its AI capabilities.

Carro provides a full-stack service for all aspects of car ownership and uses AI-powered technology to transform the car buying and selling experience. It has pioneered innovative services such as Singapore’s first contactless car purchase service, first car subscription service and the first region-wide behavior and usage-based car insurance. Carro closed its financial year ending March 2021 with over a 2.5x growth in revenue and continues to be EBITDA positive for the second year running. Carro was also named Asia Pacific’s fastest growing company in 2021 by The Financial Times and Statista.

About Carro

Carro provides a full-stack service for all aspects of car ownership and uses AI-powered technology to transform the car buying and selling experience. By offering a trustworthy and transparent experience, Carro challenges the traditional way of buying and selling cars through proprietary pricing algorithm and AI-enabled capabilities. Carro provides a range of services across the entire car ownership ecosystem. These include in-house financing solutions, innovative insurance products, flexible car ownership experience and after-sales services. It has pioneered innovative services such as Singapore’s first contactless online car purchase service, first car subscription service and the first region-wide behaviour and usage-based car insurance solutions. Founded in 2015, Carro facilitates about US$1billion annualised run-rate GMV. Carro group of companies include Genie, myTukar and Jualo. As of June 2021, Carro has raised over US$400 million in equity from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, EDBI, Mitsubishi Corporation, MS&AD Ventures, Insignia Ventures Partners and B Capital Group.

About Beacon Venture Capital (Beacon VC)

Founded in 2017, Beacon VC is the wholly-owned corporate venture capital fund of Kasikornbank PCL. Beacon VC focuses on strategic investments in early to growth-stage technology startups covering not only financial technology (fintech) but also consumer internet and enterprise technology. Beacon VC has recently increased fund size to $185 million to cover more diverse industries and has invested in several technology startups in Thailand and abroad such as FlowAccount, Jitta, Builk, Grab, Nium, and Aspire.