Online automobile platform Autohome committed $100m to China-based online used car auction service Tiantianpaiche. In addition to providing the funding, Autohome obtained an option to invest up to $65m in convertible note. The funding will, reportedly, be used to finance the company’s expansion across China and developing new services, such as used car retail and financing.
Tiantianpaiche runs an online auction platform for used car sellers and buyers. It also operates numerous dealership in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou and is aiming to sell a million vehicles annually by 2020.
Tiantianpaiche had already raised rounds including other domestic and international corporate backers, such as internet company Tencent, automotive e-commerce portal Bitauto, telecoms group Softbank’s SB China Capital and trading and technology firm Susquehanna International Group’s local unit SIG Asia Investments.
The company is part of the vehicles marketplaces and platform space, whose relatively large rounds have attracted the attention of corporate investors over the past few years, as the historical bar chart from GCV Analytics shows here. A considerable number of corporate deals in that space were done in Asia. In particular, in places like China, the rise of the country’s middle class has gone hand in hand with higher demand for automobiles, whether new or used ones.
