Cross
category classifieds major Quikr has raised $150 million in a financing round
led by Tiger Global Management and Investment AB Kinnevik as well as first time
investor, Steadview Capital.
In
March last year Quikr has raised $90 million funding round from a group of
investors led by Swedish investment firm Investment Kinnevik. According to some
media reports, with this round Quikr has raised $350 million of total funding
across eight rounds of funding.
Currently,
Quikr has more than 30 million monthly consumers and small business users
across 1000 cities in the country.
The
raised capital will be used in company’s fast growing mobile business and in
key categories where Quikr has leadership positions, including goods, cars, real
estate, jobs and services.
According
to a Ficci-KPMG report on media and entertainment - Online classified market is
dominated by job and matrimony but users seem to be more tend to buying and
selling a range of used products through portals like Quikr and OLX.
Like
e-Commerce majors shifting their focus towards mobile from web, online
classifieds platforms are also betting big on mobile. In past Quikr had
launched chat feature on mobile to avoid hassle with unwanted calls faced by
users.
Lee
Fixel, Quikr’s Partner, Tiger Global
said that Quikr has built its market-leading position by steadily innovating
new features, such as messaging, which are rooted in its deep understanding of
India as a market and mobile as a medium. They were excited to be a part of this growth story, which offers
millions of Indians an easy way to transact with one another across a large
number of categories.
“We’ve undertaken this transaction to further
consolidate our leadership in the Indian classifieds market. Our strategy of
innovating for the local market has played out really well and we intend to
continue to do that as we go forward,” said PranayChulet, Founder and CEO of
Quikr.
Besides
them JustDial is another strong player in the horizontal classifieds play with
11.8 million listings. Japanese investment fund Softbank led a $90 million
investment in Mumbai based Housing.com along with Falconedge and other
investors.
Niche
online classifieds like auto has been witnessing significant growth. Over the
past few years more than $100 million poured into India’s auto classifieds
space.
After product based e-Commerce and online cab
space, now online classifieds is going through an interesting phase and venture
capitalists are bullish in verticals like reality.
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