Droom Technology Pvt. Ltd, an online marketplace for new and used vehicles, has acquired a non-banking financial company to strengthen its consumer and dealer lending arm, Droom Credit.
The Gurugram-based company has acquired Xeraphin Finvest Pvt. Ltd for an undisclosed sum of money, Droom Technology said in a statement.
Sandeep Aggarwal, founder and chief executive officer at Droom Technology, said the acquisition will help the startup bolster its capabilities in offering loans at a greater scale. “We have spent years at building the entire 21st-century digital ecosystem with pricing, certification, financial services,” Aggarwal said.
The company says Droom Credit has already processed over 10,000 loans in the past 12 months and has onboarded several lending partners, including IDFC First Bank, Yes Bank, Tata Capital, Mannapuram Finance, Faircent and Hero Fincorp.
In October last year, Droom raised $30 million (around Rs 220 crore) in its Series E funding round, with the company saying it would use the capital to develop Droom Credit. The Series E investment was led by the family office of Japanese investor Joe Hirao, who is the founder of multi-business firm ZIGExN.
In the same year in May, the company raised another $30 million (around Rs 204 crore) in its Series D round, which was led by Toyota Tsusho Corporation and existing investor Digital Garage of Japan. In July 2017, the company received $20 million in its Series C round from Integrated Asset Management (Asia) Ltd and Digital Garage.
Droom was founded in 2014 by Sandeep Aggarwal, who also co-founded e-commerce portal ShopClues. Droom says it is an artificial intelligence and data sciences-driven online transactional platform, and that it has built an entire ecosystem around used automobiles, including for aspects like orange book value, vehicle inspection, vehicular discovery and history.
The firm has four marketplace formats – business-to-business, business-to-customer, customer-to-customer, and customer-to-business. It also has three pricing formats – fixed price, best offer and an auction model. It also offers services such as warranties and insurance.
In the online used-automobiles segment, Droom competes with Truebil, CarDekho, Carwale and CarTrade. Online classifieds platforms OLX and Quikr, too, operate in the segment.