Gurugram-based automobile startup GoMechanic has raised USD 35 million in its Series C round led by New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global. Existing backers like Sequoia Capital, Orios Venture Partners, and Chiratae Ventures also participated in the round.
According to a report by local media Entrackr, which cited regulatory filings, GoMechanic’s board has approved the allotment of 4,722 Series C preference shares at an issue price of INR 541,061 (USD 7,430) to raise USD 35 million.
While Tiger Global pumped in USD 26.3 million, Sequoia, Orios, and Chiratae Ventures invested USD 4.3 million, USD 2.6 million, and USD 1.7 million, respectively. The latest round, which reportedly values GoMechanic at USD 315–320 million, brings the total funding raised by the five-year-old startup to date to USD 55 million.
Started by Kushal Karwa, Amit Bhasin, Rishabh Karwa, and Nitin Rana in 2016, GoMechanic offers doorstep pickup and delivery of vehicles for repair and service. It runs a network of franchise-owned stores which is operated and controlled by the company. The startup also works with existing car repair garages around the country and provides them with an inventory of spare parts.
The company, which competes with Blume Ventures-backed Pitstop, myTVS, and Crossroads, among others, claims that its repair services are 40% cheaper than what is offered by auto manufacturers and other businesses in the organized repair market.
With Tiger Global coming on its cap table, the co-founders’ collective stake has been diluted to 23.58%. Tiger now holds an 8.35% stake in GoMechanic, while Sequoia, Orios, and Chirate have 28.3%, 18.03%, 10.53% stakes, respectively, in the company.
Since the beginning of this year, Tiger Global has been writing big checks for local startups in the world’s second-most-populous country. Nine of the 14 startups that became unicorns in 2021 so far are backed by the New York-headquartered VC.
Of late, Tiger Global has begun to ramp up its investments in early-to-growth stages as well. In the past couple of months, it has led a USD 15.6 million Series A round in a health insurance startup, a USD 30 million Series B in Twitter-like microblogging app Koo, and a USD 25 million Series B round in crypto exchange CoinSwitch Kuber.
Tiger Global is reportedly looking to cut checks for a few more startups, including digital payments and lending startup BharatPe and social commerce startup DealShare.
The high-profile VC firm invested USD 586 million across 21 deals in 2020, which earned it the top VC spot in the country, in terms of deal value, according to India Venture Capital Report 2021, published earlier in March. Of these, seven were USD 100-million plus funding deals, including fantasy sports firm Dream11, edtech decacorn Byju’s, fintech giant Razorpay, and edtech startup Vedantu.
