Vinay Sanghi, Founder & Chief Executive Officer (CEO), CarTrade Technologies told ET, the recently concluded integration with OLX has helped expand revenues by 45% to Rs 680-700 crore. “We (still) have cash reserves of about Rs 700 crore. We are open to investing in companies which will either help enter a new market or bring new products and technologies to customers”, Sanghi said, adding CarTrade wants to digitise the entire ecosystem and offer value-added services, be it auto finance, leasing, insurance, servicing or ownership.
The integration with OLX, Sanghi said, has also helped more than double the average number of unique visitors to 68 million per month, with 90% of these coming in organically. While auto still continues to comprise 80% of revenues at the Group, Sanghi said the focus will also be on expanding non-auto business verticals going ahead.
“Real estate, electronics, two-wheelers are all major categories on OLX. What we are now trying to do is set up verticals for key businesses to grow operations. The ratio (between auto and non-auto) mid-term may not change much as auto is a fast-growing category but overall there is a big potential to increase revenues”, Sanghi informed.
According to Sanghi, OLX has a base of 100 million users with nearly of third of these coming to buy or sell a product on the platform every month.
A priority project short-term is to commence financial services on OLX. He said, “The other thing we want to do is offer financial services within OLX.” Overall, Sanghi said all of the group businesses are independently profitable and the emphasis would be to continuously grow margins going ahead. CarTrade reported an increase of 132% in consolidated net profit at Rs 12.96 crore in the second quarter ended Sep 30, 2023. CarTrade registered revenues of Rs 314.33 crore, which is an increase 258% over Rs 87.88 crore in the same period last fiscal. CarTrade Tech is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. CarTrade is a platform for classified automobile ads. Earlier, CarTrade had acquired CarWale and BikeWale in the online new and used car and two-wheeler space; Shriram Automall which was into automobile auction and auto inspections and valuations firm Adroit Auto.