Mr Tata is surely making his presence felt in the rapidly growing e-commerce segment in the country. Yesterday Mr Tata made and investment in Cardekho.com. He also joined venture capital firm Kalaari Capital in an Advisory role.
After investing in Snapdeal, Bluestone and Urban Ladder in 2014, Ratan Tata made his fourth investment in a startup with Cardekho.com. Cardekho.com is an online automobile classifieds portal. The amount of investment remains undisclosed.
“Valuation is a new thing to me so I’m still learning about it. What I look at while investing in start-ups is the quality and intelligence of the entrepreneurs. That is what I have based my current investments on,” Tata said.
As a part of the investment, Mr. Tata now partly owns GirnarSoft which owns and operates CarDekho.com, BikeDekho.com and PriceDekho.com. Cardekho had raised $50 million last month from Hillhouse, Tybourne and Sequoia Capital. The funds were to be utilized for branding and marketing purposes. In September 2014, CarDekho had acquired IbiboGroup’s Gaadi.com, for an undisclosed amount.
Mr Tata has also joined Kalaari Capital in an Advisory role. Kalaari Capital has investments in more than 15 companies including Snapdeal, Urban ladder, Zivame etc. They also picked up a small stake in Flipkart when Myntra got acquired by Flipkart last year. Kalaari was one of the early investors in Myntra.
We are pleased to join hands with Mr Tata and believe this collaboration will take us further towards creating leaders and great companies from India,” Kalaari Capital managing director Vani Kola said.
The e-commerce sector in India is booming right now and big names such as Reliance and Aditya Birla Group have also made a foray into this market.
India’s e-commerce market is expected to reach $6 billion in 2015, a 70% increase over 2014 revenue of $3.5 billion, according to technology researcher Gartner Inc.
