The company is likely to file draft papers for the initial public offering in the next couple of months, and the IPO could be launched in early 2022, one of the two people said.
“The company plans to raise up to ₹1,000 crore through the IPO, which will be a mix of primary and secondary share sales,” the person said, adding that the initial public offering could see some of Droom’s existing investors pare their stakes.
Droom did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Droom, which began operations in 2014, raised the first tranche of its pre-IPO round in July this year, valuing the startup at $1.2 billion. New investors, including 57 Stars and Seven Train Ventures, took part in the round, along with some existing investors.
While the pandemic initially impacted sales of online platforms such as Droom, it made a sharp rebound since the end of last year as fears of infection spurred demand for personal mobility.
“Droom has witnessed a jump in used vehicle sales in H1 2021 due to a few factors, which includes people preferring ownership rather than shared mobility, uncertainties in economic condition due to the pandemic, and less depreciable value of used vehicle versus new vehicle. Most of the buying traffic on Droom came from Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Mumbai, especially for the petrol + manual variants,” the second person said.
In a July interview, Droom founder and chief executive officer Sandeep Aggarwal said that the company’s annual run-rate is $1.7 billion for gross merchandise value (GMV) and $54 million for net revenue.
“The company remains on track to touch a GMV of $2 billion and a net revenue of more than $65 million in CY (calendar year) 2021,” he had said.
Cars contribute almost 90% of Droom’s GMV, with two-wheelers comprising the rest. In terms of unit sales, cars make up two-thirds and two-wheelers the remainder.
Though Droom has primarily been a used-vehicle platform, it has started selling new vehicles, too, in recent months.
Sales of new electric vehicles are where the company expects to see strong growth in the coming years.
Services is another big focus area for Droom as the company feels that this can help significantly boost its margins.
Aggarwal said that online shopping of automobiles is expected to grow to 7% of total transactions in 2025, up from 0.7% currently.
This article was first published on livemint.