German Media firm Axel Springer AG and the India Today group have together acquired a majority 70.4% stake in Automotive Exchange Pvt Ltd, the owner of automotive classified ads portal CarWale.com.

Axel Springer has bought 52.1% stake, while the India Today group has bought 18.3% stake.

Axel Springer and the India Today group already have a 49:51 joint venture partnership in India to publish the fortnightly magazine Auto Bild. The acquisition of Carwale is a natural extension of this partnership.

The remaining stake (about 30%) is with the founders led by Mohit Dubey and also employees. The founders have sold part equity.

Carwale's investors - early stage fund Seedfund and Sierra Ventures - have sold their entire stake in this deal.

In 2006, Carwale raised funding from Seedfund, diluting about a 30% stake. It raised another $7 Mn in commitment from Sierra Ventures in 2008.

Axel has also acquired 19.1% stake in India Today's e-commerce portal, BagItToday.com. The e-commerce site was launched by India Today last year and was completely owned by it so far. Axel Springer has also acquired the option of increasing its 19.1% to a majority stake in Bag It Today.

Axel Springler owns Auto Bild, the world’s biggest selling automotive magazine. With India Today Group, Axel Springler have been jointly publishing the Indian edition of Auto Bild since 2008.

Carwale claims to have 1.3 Mn unique users and more than 17 Mn page impressions per month. The classified ads portal makes money by selling customer leads to new car dealers and to used car brokers.

Axel Springer is the largest publishing house in Europe and controls the largest share of the German market for daily newspapersowns more than 80 online properties, including a few classifieds advertising websites, such as Stepstone.com (jobs site) and Immonet.de (Real-estate portal). It operates in more than 35 countries and owns more than 230 newspapers, including Fakt and Bild and magazines such as Auto Bild, Computers Bild and Sports Bild.

Some other players in this space are Autoindia.com, Carazoo.com, launched by Bangalore-based software maker Logix Microsystems, CarSalesIndia.com, DriveInside.com, Gaadi.com, and Indiaautomobile.com (part of Consim Info Group, owner of Bharatmatrimony).

This is the second acquisition in the online auto classifieds space in India: in August last year, CarTradeIndia.com was acquired by MotorExchange, which was subsequently funded by Canaan Partners.

Previous Article

GoAir Plans To Raise $100 Mn To Fund Aircraft Acquisition

Next Article

Dentsu Acquires Webchutney From Network18

KVEZAR VIEW

  DEAL TRACKER FOR

Date	Transaction	Type	Buyer	Size ($mn)
2010-11-11	Automotive Exchange (Carwale.com) - Axel Springer, India Today	M&A	Axel Springer AG India Today Group	-
2008-09-29	Automotive Exchange - Sierra Ventures, Seedfund	Venture Capital	Seedfund I Sierra Ventures	0.08
2006-10-31	Automotive Exchange - Seedfund	Venture Capital	Seedfund I	0.00

 

  Recent Transactions In The Sector

Date	Type	Buyer	Target	Size ($mn)	State
17/05/2013	M&A	Aditi Technologies Private Limited	Get Cloud Ready Technology Consulting (India) Private Limited	-	Completed
14/05/2013	M&A	8K Miles Software Services Limited	FuGen Solutions	7.50	Completed
07/05/2013	M&A	Global Edge Software Limited	Dearborn Electronics India Private Limited	-	Completed
06/05/2013	M&A	Pramati Technologies Private Limited	WaveMaker	-	Completed

 

  Profiles

Fund
Name	Corpus	Target Sector	Website	KeyContact
Seedfund I	15	Media Retail IT/ITES/Technology Telecom	http://www.seedfund.in/	Mahesh MurthyBharati JacobAnand LuniaPaula Ravindra MariwalaPravin Gandhi
Sierra Ventures		IT/ITES/Technology Telecom Healthcare	www.sierraventures.com

Company
Name	Promoters	Office	Competitor	Website
Automotive Exchange Private Limited (CarWale.com)	Arun Sahlam Tufail Ahmad Khan	A-11, Priyadarshini Nilayam, Near Tilak Nagar, E8 Extension, Gulmohar	Automobile India	http://www.carwale.com

  Advisor

Avendus Advisors Private Limited

All Comments

Readers' Recommendations

Post a Comment

Display Name		E-mail
Comment
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.