Carsome, Malaysia’s first tech unicorn startup, raised $290 million in a Series E funding round, valuing the used-car online marketplace at $1.7 billion.
Other investors included four billionaire-backed companies: Jeffrey Cheah’s Malaysian conglomerate Sunway, Lance Gokongwei’s Philippines conglomerate Gokongwei Group, Tsai Ming-kai’s Taiwan chip designer MediaTek, and Francis Yeoh’s Malaysian infrastructure conglomerate YTL Group. Telecom company Taiwan Mobile also participated in the funding round.
Founded in 2015, Carsome is one of Southeast Asia’s largest used car e-commerce platforms, alongside Carro and Carousell. The platform helps with inspections, ownership transfer and finances between consumers and used car dealers, handling around 100,000 car transactions annually, according to Carsome.
In September, Carsome raised $170 million in a funding round that included Catcha Group, MediaTek and Malaysian government fund Penjana Kapital. The startup achieved unicorn status in July after a $200 million share-swap deal with Australia-listed iCar Asia.
Meanwhile, Singapore-based Carro, which is backed by the likes of SoftBank, Mitsubishi and Singapore government’s investment arm EDBI, also has big plans for growth. “The plan is to look to become a decacorn in the next few years, as soon as possible,” Aaron Tan, Carro’s cofounder and CEO, told Forbes Asia in August.