Carsome Completes Acquisition of Parent Company Mobil123 and Carmudi Indonesia

Carsome Group has announced that it has completed its acquisition of iCar Asia. They took over 80,1% of the shares of Catcha Group and other shareholders. After this corporate action, Carsome became the sole shareholder in the company listing the automotive product.

iCar Asia Previously, he had also been listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) since September 2012. At the time of this publication, the market capitalization of iCar Asia (ASX: ICQ) was in the range of AUD 238,4 million or equivalent to IDR 2,4 trillion.

As is known, iCar Asia has a number of platforms listing automotive parts spread across a number of countries in Southeast Asia. In Indonesia, they also operate the Mobil123 portal for consumers and the SiJari application for car dealers. September 2019, iCar Asia also announced its acquisition of Carmudi Indonesia worth 42 billion Rupiah.

Both Carmudi and Mobil123 are currently still operating under their own brands. Apart from portal listing, iCar Asia also owns the automotive media OtoSpirit for the Indonesian market, founded in 2016.

In an official release, Carsome Co-founder & Group CEO Eric Cheng said that his party has been working with iCar Asia since July 2021. “We are pleased with the smooth completion of this acquisition. This partnership will enable us to further enhance our offering across search, consideration, purchase and fulfillment processes, spanning the entire automotive ecosystem anchored in the core values ​​of trust, transparency and technology."

In addition, it is hoped that the inclusion of iCar Asia in strategic synergies will allow Carsome to provide more diverse solutions and experiences throughout the car buying and selling value chain, both for dealers and consumers. Moreover, it is projected that the turnover of the used car buying and selling business in the Southeast Asia region annually generates a value of more than $55 billion.

Carsome fast move

Earlier this year, Carsome just announced closing of series E . funding worth $290 million or around 4,1 trillion Rupiah; and managed to boost the company's valuation to around $1,7 billion.

Currently they are running on a C2B2C business model -- not only buying from consumers and selling them to a network of dealers, they are now also selling used cars directly to consumers. Equipped with O2O experience through experience centre scattered in various cities.

Regarding the M&A strategy, this is not the first time Carsome has done it. Previously, their unit in Indonesia had also acquired a majority stake PT Universal Collections, namely a car and motorcycle auction service company that already has branch offices in various regions, including Greater Jakarta, West Java, East Java, Yogyakarta, to Sumatra. This action is said to support the strategy omnichannel company, to offer services online-offline integrated.

For platforms car marketplace itself, is currently experiencing a momentum of rapid growth. Apart from Carsome, a number of other startups also received significant funding. Including the latest Moladin as a local challenger, last mid-January they announced series A pendanaan funding which boosted the company's valuation at 3,3 trillion Rupiah. In addition, in the regional arena there is also Carro who has also reached a milestone unicorn.

While for the platform listing alone, Mobil123 and Carmudi are among the ones that get the most attention when it comes to traffic performance – in the top 10 most visited sites. In addition, they also have a number of competitors, one of which is Oto.com, OLX Indonesia, GridOto, to CintaMobil (part of the Dai Viet Group, from Vietnam).