The Ride So Far Of India's First Unicorn From Jaipur

In October 2021, CarDekho raised $250 million in a pre-IPO round, with a $1.2 billion valuation

- S Shanthi

CarDekho happened in 2008 when brothers Anurag and Amit Jain, both IIT-Delhi graduates, had gone to New Delhi from Jaipur to buy their first BMW at an Auto Expo. They saw a lot of good cars and later when they searched for the information on them online, it wasn’t available. That prompted them to start the portal, CarDekho. The founders’ own need for information on cars and the lack thereof then paved the way for CarDekho. The founders then went back to the Expo, collected all the brochures, stacked them in the boot of their car, and created a site with a friend’s help. “Experimenting with a few ideas, starting from a non-metro city (Jaipur), non-availability of talent, digitizing an otherwise traditional business, scaling and rightsizing the company and making it profitable even before the first fundraise, expansions, etc., were challenges we faced. But we remained optimistic, put our best foot forward and took calculated risks,” said Amit Jain, CEO and cofounder, CarDekho.

We built a team of like-minded people who too had an entrepreneurial spark and aced every hurdle and most of the employees who joined us at the beginning of our journey are still a part of CarDekho and it’s a great feeling, Amit added.