Startup Deep Dive : CarDekho — profitable at the core, still losing money as a group

CarDekho wants to go public at a valuation of up to ₹15,000 crore (about $1.56 billion), higher than the $1.2 billion mark it hit as a freshly minted unicorn back in October 2021. Here is the contradiction: the company behind that valuation target, Girnar Software Private Limited, has not posted a single year of group-level profit since at least 2022, and it lost ₹266 crore in the financial year that ended in March 2025 on revenue of ₹2,795 crore.

That is not necessarily a red flag. CarDekho’s own core business, the car-research-and-classifieds engine that made its name, is profitable and has been for two years running. The losses sit almost entirely in the newer, regulated, capital-hungry bets the group has piled on top of that core: insurance broking through InsuranceDekho, auto financing through Rupyy, and an expansion into Southeast Asia. Whether that bet pays off before the IPO clock runs out is the real story here.

Quick facts

What they do

CarDekho started as a single idea: put every car’s specifications, prices and reviews on one website so a buyer did not have to visit ten showrooms to compare them. Under the Girnar Software umbrella, that idea has grown into a group of businesses that follow an Indian car or two-wheeler owner through the entire ownership cycle. CarDekho.com, Gaadi.com and Zigwheels handle research, listings and classifieds for new and used vehicles. Rupyy arranges financing for the purchase. InsuranceDekho sells the motor, health and life insurance around it. Revv rents cars by the day or month, and Carrum manages vehicle fleets for businesses. The common customer is the same person at different moments: someone comparing a hatchback online today might be financing it through Rupyy next month and insuring it through InsuranceDekho the month after.

The origin

Before there was a car website, there was an IT services firm. Amit Jain, an IIT Delhi graduate who had worked in engineering and delivery roles at firms including Trilogy Software, moved back to Jaipur when his father’s health worsened, and for a time ran the family’s gems trading business, as per a profile of Jain published by 5paisa’s Finschool. In 2007 he and his brother Anurag started GirnarSoft, an IT outsourcing company run out of a rented setup with a handful of employees and cheap furniture, according to a 2017 profile of the brothers in Open magazine’s Wealth Issue.

The car idea came from a personal frustration. In 2008, Amit attended the Auto Expo in Delhi, picked up brochures from stall after stall, and found there was no single place online that put all of that specification and pricing data together for a buyer to compare. GirnarSoft’s engineers built that comparison database, and CarDekho.com was the result, per the same Open magazine account. It launched with no advertising budget at all: for its first five years, the site grew purely on search-engine traffic, not paid marketing, as that profile records.

The struggle years

The brothers did not get everything right on the first attempt, and 2008 alone produced two failed side bets, per Open magazine’s account. One was a jewellery e-commerce venture built on their father’s gems business, shut within about six months once the working-capital demands of holding inventory became clear. The other was an astrology portal, seeded with predictions from their grandfather, which they closed because they felt uneasy building a product around advice on people’s personal lives.

The closer call came in January 2009. Amit and Anurag had put roughly ₹1 crore of the company’s own capital into stock market futures trades, and the position was wiped out as the global financial crisis hit Indian markets. With CarDekho itself not yet making money, the loss left them short of the cash needed to pay a staff of 40 to 50 people, per Open magazine’s retelling. The founders’ own account of the lesson, as quoted in that profile, was blunt: never risk the company’s base capital again. A year later, in 2010, a separate e-commerce experiment called ShopDekho lost the company another ₹60-70 lakh competing against better-funded discounting rivals, and it too was shut down. A decade later, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a structural pivot rather than a near-death moment: CarDekho closed its physical Gaadi-branded showrooms through 2020 and moved used-car buying toward a remote, video-led inspection model, according to the company’s own account of that period.

The turning point

The clearest before-and-after split in CarDekho’s numbers sits around its October 2021 fundraise. The company raised $250 million, split between $200 million in Series E equity and $50 million in debt, led by LeapFrog Investments with new participation from Canyon Partners, Mirae Asset and Harbor Spring Capital alongside existing backers Sequoia Capital India and Sunley House Capital, at a valuation of $1.2 billion, the company said in an October 2021 release announcing its unicorn status. That single round did more than mint a headline number. In the financial year before it, FY21, CarDekho Group’s consolidated operating revenue stood at ₹884 crore. In FY22, the first full year after the raise, revenue jumped 81% to about ₹1,598 crore, as the group poured fresh capital into scaling Rupyy and InsuranceDekho rather than just the original classifieds business, per company disclosures reported by Inc42. The unicorn round, in other words, is the moment CarDekho stopped being primarily a car-research website with financing and insurance on the side, and became a multi-business group where those newer arms increasingly set the growth rate, and the loss line.

The money behind it

CarDekho’s own fundraising history runs through several distinct stages: a $15 million Series A from Sequoia Capital India in November 2013; Series B and B1 rounds totalling $45 million in 2015; Series B3 and B4 rounds of $17 million in 2018; a $110 million Series C and a $70 million Series D, both in 2019; and the $250 million Series E in October 2021 described above, per company and press reporting of those rounds. Three backers stand out for what they changed. Sequoia Capital India’s 2013 check was the first institutional money in the company and funded the acquisitions of Gaadi.com from Ibibo Group in 2014 and Zigwheels from Times Internet in 2015, which consolidated CarDekho’s position in classifieds. LeapFrog Investments, an impact-focused fund that specialises in financial services for emerging markets, led the 2021 round and pushed capital specifically toward the insurance and financing arms rather than the core website. HDFC Bank’s investment in the group is notable less for its size than for what it signals: a large Indian lender taking a direct stake in a company that originates auto loans through Rupyy.

InsuranceDekho has raised its own, separate capital rather than living entirely off group cash. It raised $150 million in a Series A round at a valuation above $500 million, and then a further round reported at $60 million, before closing a $70 million round in March 2025 co-led by Beams Fintech Fund, Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) and BNP Paribas Cardif’s insurtech fund, according to YourStory’s reporting on that round. Coverage of that same round by Fintech.global put InsuranceDekho’s valuation at $750-800 million as of January 2025, which would make it a “soonicorn” rather than a unicorn in its own right at that point, ahead of a subsequent leap in scale through its 2026 merger described below.

How it makes money

The classifieds and research business, CarDekho’s oldest, largely earns lead-generation and advertising revenue: car makers, dealers and financiers pay to be listed prominently, to run ads, or to receive verified buyer leads generated by the site’s traffic. This is a low-capital, high-margin model once traffic is established, which is why it is the part of the group that reached profitability first. Rupyy earns on auto financing, typically through commissions or spreads on loans it originates and channels to partner banks and non-bank lenders, disbursing roughly ₹16,000 crore in loans in FY25 with new-car financing volumes up 97% year-on-year, according to CarDekho’s FY25 disclosures reported by Entrackr. InsuranceDekho earns commissions from insurers for policies it distributes through its network of point-of-sale agents. The part people tend to get wrong is assuming a “car website” monetises primarily through display advertising; in practice, the financing and insurance arms, not banner ads, are what the group is now betting its growth on, and they are also what is losing money while they scale.

The numbers

CarDekho Group’s revenue has grown every year on a consolidated operating-revenue basis, though FY24 saw a dip on that specific measure that the group attributed to closing its used-car retail business, even as a separately reported “net revenue” figure for FY24 rose because of a shift toward higher-margin lines, per Entrackr’s and Business Standard’s respective reporting on that year. The table below uses consolidated operating revenue and the group’s own comparable-basis loss figures, both in ₹ crore, as reported year to year.

Two footnotes matter here. First, Business Standard reported that FY22’s loss narrowed to ₹246 crore after an exceptional ₹290 crore mark-to-market gain on investments in associates was applied, against the ₹535 crore figure before that adjustment; the table above uses the pre-exceptional figure for consistency with later years. Second, on a standalone basis, the entity that houses CarDekho’s core classifieds and financing business crossed ₹1,000 crore of revenue in FY25 and turned a profit of ₹27 crore, its second consecutive profitable year after a standalone profit of about ₹37 crore in FY24 following a standalone loss of ₹143 crore in FY23, per Entrackr’s FY25 report. CarDekho ended FY25 with net cash reserves of ₹1,177 crore, the same report noted.

Where the money comes from

Split the FY25 numbers by arm and a clear pattern emerges: the standalone core (auto classifieds plus financing) generated a bit over a third of group revenue, around ₹1,001 crore, and did so profitably. The remaining roughly ₹1,794 crore came from InsuranceDekho, Revv, Carrum and the group’s Southeast Asia operations, businesses the company itself says are still in a growth-investment phase, per Entrackr’s FY25 coverage. The surprise is less about geography and more about which unit is carrying which load: the “boring” listings-and-loans business funds the group’s cash position, while the newer, more headline-friendly bets in insurance and mobility are the ones spending it. Revv’s mobility business grew 40% year-on-year in FY25 to more than 1,300 vehicles across 16 cities serving over 65,000 customers, and InsuranceDekho, per the same disclosures, had expanded to more than 1,500 operating cities and 98% pin-code coverage by that point.

The risks

Three risks are worth naming plainly. First, competitive structure: CarDekho’s classifieds business is a marketplace that connects buyers to dealers and lenders, whereas rivals such as Cars24 and Spinny run full-stack models that buy, refurbish and resell used cars directly with their own warranties, a structurally different approach to the same used-car buyer, as multiple industry comparisons of the segment note. If consumers increasingly prefer that guaranteed, full-stack experience over a listings marketplace, CarDekho’s core lead-generation take rate is exposed. Second, cross-subsidy risk: the company’s own management has attributed its consolidated losses specifically to continued investment in InsuranceDekho and its Southeast Asia business, per Entrackr’s FY25 reporting, which means the group’s path to consolidated profit depends on two regulated, capital-intensive bets reaching scale on a timeline the company does not fully control, particularly given that insurance distribution operates under IRDAI oversight. Third, IPO structure risk: reporting by Inc42 and SiliconIndia on the planned 2026 listing describes an issue that is mostly an offer for sale, with only around 10% of the total ₹3,000-3,500 crore issue size structured as a fresh issue, meaning most proceeds would go to existing shareholders rather than into the business, on a company that has twice previously flagged and then shelved IPO plans, in 2021 and again in 2024.

The takeaway

A profitable core does not automatically make a profitable company once that core keeps getting used to fund the next regulated, capital-intensive bet. CarDekho’s classifieds-and-financing engine has proven it can make money; the group as a whole has chosen, deliberately, to keep spending that money on insurance distribution and international expansion instead of banking it. That is a legitimate strategy for building a bigger business, but it also means the group’s claim to a higher IPO valuation than its 2021 private round rests on investors believing those newer bets will convert into profit on a schedule the market accepts, not on the numbers already in hand.

Frequently asked questions

Is CarDekho profitable?

Not at the consolidated group level: Girnar Software Private Limited reported a consolidated net loss of ₹266 crore in FY25. Its standalone core classifieds-and-financing business, however, was profitable for a second consecutive year, posting a ₹27 crore profit in FY25, per Entrackr’s reporting on the group’s FY25 results.

Who founded CarDekho and when?

Brothers Amit Jain and Anurag Jain founded CarDekho in 2008 in Jaipur, building on their IT services firm GirnarSoft, which they had started in 2007, according to a 2017 Open magazine profile of the founders.

What is CarDekho’s current valuation?

CarDekho was last valued at $1.2 billion when it raised a $250 million Series E round in October 2021, per the company’s own announcement. As of July 2026, reports from Inc42 and SiliconIndia said the company was targeting an IPO valuation of ₹13,000-15,000 crore, above that 2021 mark.

Is CarDekho going public?

As of the reporting reviewed for this piece (July 2026), CarDekho was targeting a DRHP filing for an IPO of roughly ₹3,000-3,500 crore, mostly structured as an offer for sale, with bankers Axis Bank, IIFL, Goldman Sachs and Nomura engaged, per Inc42’s and SiliconIndia’s coverage. The company had previously flagged, then shelved, IPO plans in 2021 and 2024.

How is InsuranceDekho connected to CarDekho?

InsuranceDekho is part of the same group and has raised its own separate funding rounds. In September 2026, it announced a merger with RenewBuy to form what the companies described as India’s largest AI-enabled insurance distribution platform by point-of-sale premium, per Business Standard’s coverage of the merger; CarDekho’s own planned IPO would hold InsuranceDekho as an associate investment rather than include it directly.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Entrackr, “CarDekho Group posts Rs 2,795 Cr revenue in FY25; losses narrow marginally,” 2025
• Entrackr (Fintrackr), “CarDekho Group’s revenue slips due to closure of used car biz; InsuranceDekho shines,” 2024
• Business Standard, “CarDekho’s FY23 revenue rises 46% to Rs 2,331 cr, Rupyy drives growth,” 1 November 2023
• Business Standard, “CarDekho Group’s net revenue increases 54% to Rs 2,074 crore in FY24,” 28 November 2024
• Business Standard, “Auto-tech firm CarDekho Group narrows loss to Rs 246 crore in FY22,” 2 January 2023
• CarDekho.com press release, “CarDekho Raises $250mn In Pre-IPO Round, Reaches Unicorn Status With $1.2bn Valuation,” 13 October 2021
• Inc42, “CarDekho To File DRHP For ₹3,500 Cr IPO This Quarter,” 9 July 2026
• SiliconIndia, “CarDekho to File DRHP for Rs 3,500 Crore IPO This Quarter,” 10 July 2026
• Fintech.global, “InsuranceDekho could secure up to $100m in funding led by MUFG Bank and C. Development,” 28 January 2025
• YourStory, “InsuranceDekho raises $70M from Beams, MUFG and BNP Paribas Cardif,” March 2025
• Business Standard, “InsuranceDekho, RenewBuy merge to form largest AI-led insurance platform,” 1 September 2026
• Open magazine, Wealth Issue 2017, “Amit Jain, 40, Anurag Jain, 38, Co-Founders, Cardekho”
• 5paisa Finschool, “Amit Jain – CarDekho Co-Founder Success Story”
• Inc42, “Shark Tank Judge Amit Jain’s CarDekho Group’s FY23 Revenue Jumps 1.5X To INR 2,331 Cr”

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