Founder of pre-owned cars marketplace Droom, Sandeep Aggarwal told businessline that the company has cut down its mass-market business by 90 per cent as it increases focus on improving unit economics and profitability.

Aggarwal added that there are not much profits to be made in the mass market segment and reducing the focus on this segment has enabled the company to make over 4.5 per cent profit on the sale of each car as compared to the earlier 3 per cent.

He noted that even though this step has reduced the company’s sale volumes, GMV and net revenue but the company’s fundamentals have improved. “Today, we have become Ebitda positive at a car level. That was never the case in the past,” he added.

The company is now focused on the mid-market and luxury markets. Further, Droom has also started offering its internal pricing, inspection, and automobile historical record service to other businesses. The company is also leveraging its dealers’ network in over 1,166 cities to distribute fintech products like loans, and insurance.

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In July 2021, Droom raised the first tranche of its $200 million pre-IPO round at $1.2 billion valuation. In November 2021, Droom had filed its DRHP with Sebi to raise ₹3,000 crore from a public listing. However, as the market conditions worsened, the IPO was later withdrawn by Droom in October 2022.

Commenting on this decision, Aggarwal said, “I have been very candid and arguably vocal that the right outcome for Droom eventually to be listed on the stock exchange. We had even completed 50 per cent of our total roadshow but factors like fear of inflation, the Russia-Ukraine war, and a drop in technology IPO stocks changed things for us. By April, it became clear that this is a problem and we found it more prudent to withdraw the IPO.”

Aggarwal is also an active angel investor who has been investing in early-stage companies since 2008. He has invested in almost 46 companies till now and invests an average of $10,000 to $30,000.

Aggarwal typically invests at the idea stage, seed stage, or Pre-series A round. In terms of his investment criteria, he prefers start-ups with large addressable markets. Some of the themes that attract him at this point are start-ups in D2C, fintech, and Web 3.0.

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