Vehicles marketplace Droom set to close $250 mn round; unicorn tag in sight

Online marketplace for new and used vehicles Droom is all set to close a fundraising of $250 million (Rs 1,720 crore), a top company official told TechCircle.

"We are in talks with multiple institutional and strategic investors. In a very advanced stage with some of them; at least four of the returning investors are confirmed to participate," said Sandeep Aggarwal, founder and chief executive of Droom.

Some of the company's prominent investors include Lightbox, Beenext, Beenos, Digital Garage and Toyota Tsusho Corporation.

Droom, owned by Droom Technology Pvt. Ltd, is expected to turn into a unicorn with this round said Aggarwal.

"Half of the $250 million is already secured and the full round is expected to close by the end of September," he added.

After this round, the firm aims to be listed on Nasdaq in the first half of 2021.

Most of the funds from this round will go into building artificial intelligence and machine learning infrastructure for the marketplace. The company is also planning to use the money to deepen its presence in the first 500 cities in India, invest heavily in its data science and Internet of Things-driven certification services, scale up its fintech offerings and expand internationally.   

According to Droom, the company is currently doing $1.3 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) and $35 million in net revenue on an annual run-rate basis and growing in triple digits year-on-year. 

Droom aims to exit December 2019 with $2 billion in GMV and $55 million in net revenue and December 2020 with $3.5 billion in GMV and $120 million in net revenue in annual run rate. After attaining this scale, the company would like to list.

Droom entered Southeast Asia in October 2018 in Malaysia and has expanded into Singapore and Thailand ever since then.

Later this year, Droom plans to launch its used-vehicle pricing engine, Orange Book Value, in more than 25 countries. 

According to Aggarwal, the company has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence. In June 2019, the company set up an artificial intelligence lab for its marketplace.