InstaCarro, a digital marketplace that connects used car sellers to dealers in Brazil, has raised $23 million in a Series B round of funding.

Notably, U.S.-based firms co-led the investment, including J Ventures, FJ Labs and Rise Capital. Spain’s All Iron Ventures and Big Sur also participated in the financing, among others. With the latest round, São Paulo-based InstaCarro has now raised more than $56 million since its 2015 inception.

As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in people all over the world buying and selling things online, with cars being no exception. InstaCarro plans to use its new capital in part to capitalize on the shift and “aggressively” expand its reach within Brazil.

Until this year, the startup operated only in São Paulo. In the first half of this year, it launched operations in eight new cities, and is now also live in Campinas, Curitiba, Joinville, Santos, Brasília, Goiânia, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte.

For context, the startup compares itself to Carvana in the U.S., Chehaoduo in India and Carro in Indonesia. 

CEO Luca Cafici started InstaCarro after having co-founded a car classified startup in Asia with Rocket Internet. That experience, according to Cafici, taught him that “car classifieds were not solving the problems people had when selling their own cars.”

Inspired by the early success of Auto1 in Europe, he decided to return to Latin America to build a similar model, with an exclusive initial focus on Brazil because it is the (Read more...)