June 7, 2018
Tiantian Paiche, a Shanghai-based used car online platform that counts Tencent among its early backers, has raised $100 million from Autohome, an online portal for automobile consumers in China.
On its Wechat account, the company said Autohome was the sole investor in the corporate round. The investor has also obtained the right to invest an additional $65 million in the form of convertible notes, which can be redeemed within three years from the completion of this funding round.
Tiantian Paiche, founded in 2015 with a customer-to-business model, said it will use the proceeds of the latest funding round for business expansion, including in the used car retail and financing services spaces.
The latest round brings Tiantian Paiche’s total funds raised to date to $353 million. In 2017, the company raised $180 million in a Series C round backed by Tencent, SIG and SB China Venture Capital, among others.
Tiantian Paiche claims to have served over four million used car sellers on its platform, with a monthly transaction volume of over 10,000 used cars sold through its online channels.
The investor, New York-listed Autohome Inc, claims to be the leading online destination for automobile consumers in China. It provides user-generated content, an automobile library, and automobile listing information to consumers, covering the entire car purchase and ownership cycle.
Tiantian Paiche’s $100-million fundraising was announced a day after another Chinese used car online auction startup, Chezhibao, announced raising $125 million in its Series D funding round.
In May, Chinese used car trading platform Uxin Limited filed for an IPO in the US, targeting to raise up to $500 million to boost service capabilities and fund potential investments and acquisitions.
China is the world’s second-largest automotive market as measured by registered vehicles and is forecasted to become the largest automotive market by 2023, according to global research firm iResearch.
As of the end of 2017, there were approximately 185 million registered vehicles in the country, compared with 275 million in the US.
Total used car transaction volume in China reached 12.4 million in 2017, with the ratio of the country’s used car sales to new car sales by volume at 0.5 per cent, significantly lower than 2.4 per cent in the United States.
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