Indonesia, Saudi didn’t even amount to $500k of our cash-burn: Cars24 CEO

"We had entered these two markets in the last 1.5 years and there was no issue as such. God willing, we will go back in the future once again," Vikram Chopra, Cars24 co-founder and CEO.

Indonesia and Saudi Arabia put together didn't even amount to $500,000 of monthly cash burn, Cars24 Chief Executive Officer and Founder Vikram Chopra said after it emerged that the company has exited these two international markets.

"The decision to exit was taken from a prioritisation point of view. We want to deepen our focus on fewer things. From a cash burn point of view, Indonesia and Saudi weren't even 5 percent of our overall burn," Chopra told Moneycontrol.

"We had entered these two markets in the last 1.5 years and there was no issue as such. God willing, we will go back in the future once again," he added.

Apart from its home market of India, Cars24 is currently present in the United Arab Emirates, Thailand, and Australia.

In an interview with Moneycontrol in October last year, Chopra said that the company had brought down its monthly cash burn by half to below $10 million in the preceding months.

He said that the burn number is significantly lower than $10 million at present, but declined to specify the figure.

The MorningContext was the first to report Cars24's exit from the two international markets.

Amid a bull market for private tech valuations in 2021, the used car marketplace raised $850 million over two mega funding rounds in the space of a few months and hit a valuation of $3.2 billion in 2021.

It also almost doubled its India revenue to more than Rs 5,100 crore during FY22, the company said earlier. According to estimates by Fintracker, the company saw its operating revenue rise 117 percent to Rs 6,072 crore in FY22, whereas net loss jumped 8 times to Rs 1,834 crore.

In the past couple of years, Cars24 has increased its focus on the retail segment. While used car marketplaces mostly buy vehicles from individual customers, they may sell the inventory post-refurbishment either to dealerships or retail customers.

With the focus on selling more to retail customers, the company's expenses on advertisement and marketing are bound to increase

"But, we will more than makeup for that by selling other value-added services like car loans to retail customers. We also have an in-house non-banking financial company of our own," said Chopra.

"Retail is not a new segment for us and we have been doing it for years now. It is a significant portion of our business," he added.