Classifieds site Quikr claims to facilitate over 750K transactions worth $2.5B a month

Quikr India Pvt Ltd, which runs online classifieds site Quikr.com, claims to be facilitating over 750,000 transactions on a monthly basis with a transaction value as represented by gross merchandise value (GMV) of over $2.5 billion. In addition, according to the company, it is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 527 per cent, as per a presentation made by Quikr chief Pranay Chulet to investors last month.

Founded in 2008 by Chulet and Jiby Thomas, Quikr was originally started as Kijiji India. The firm later rebranded to Quikr. It is a large scale cross-category classifieds business with over 30 million consumers. These consumers come to Quikr to sell, buy, rent or find products and services in a variety of categories such as electronics and household goods, real estate, cars, bikes, jobs and services. The firm claims that small businesses across 1000 cities are using the site.

In July last year, its co-founder Thomas quit the firm to launch a digital marketing company called Web Butter Jam.

In terms of classifieds categories, the top three for the company include jobs (8.1 million users), electronics (7.6 million) and car & bikes (5.2 million). Real estate and education categories complete the top five with 4.1 and 2.5 million users respectively.

Earlier this year, Quikr had launched a pricing guide for pre-owned goods, whereby sellers can determine a value for their used goods before posting an ad for these items on Quikr.com. The company is largely competing with OLX, a Naspers Group firm.

Claiming to be the number one classifieds player in India, Quikr mentions that it has 70 per cent share of horizontal + vertical classifieds users in the country. The company further mentions that it has over twice the traffic of the number two player in the space, that is OLX. In addition, according to the company, its unpaid user base is higher than OLX's overall user base.

Last month, Quikr Mauritius Holding Pvt Ltd, the parent company of Quikr India, secured $60 million in fresh round of funding led by Tiger Global Management. The round also saw participations from its existing investors, including Matrix Partners India, Nokia Growth Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Omidyar Network, Warburg Pincus and eBay Inc, besides Swedish investment firm Investment AB Kinnevik. Kinnevik said in a separate disclosure that it infused $15 million this time around.

The capital from the latest round will be used to invest in product development as well as to further expand its mobile business. With this deal, the total funding raised by Quikr stands at around $200 million.

The latest round comes just five months after the firm announced a $90 million funding round led by Kinnevik. This funding valued the firm at around $240 million.

Quikr had previously raised over $50 million across five rounds from Warburg Pincus, Matrix Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, eBay, Nokia Growth Partners and Omidyar Network.