India Today and Axel Springer acquire 70 per cent stake in Carwale.com

As per an industry estimate, the automobile classifieds portal could be valued above Rs 100 crore.

Germany-based media firm Axel Springer - the group which owns Auto Bild magazine - and India Today Group have acquired a majority stake in the five-year-old automobile site, Carwale.com.

Axel Springer has acquired 52.1 per cent; while India Today has picked up 18.3 per cent stake in the auto portal. The remaining (about 30 per cent) will be held by the founders and employees of Carwale.com.

afaqs! has also learnt that India Today's investment is independent of the joint venture between the group and Axel Springer. For the record, Axel Springer and India Today had tied up in 2008 to publish Auto Bild magazine (owned by Axel Springer) in India. They already run an automobile site (Autobild.in) in the country, which seems to be an online replication of the magazine.

"Venture capital firms - Seedfund and US-based Sierra Ventures - which invested in Carwale.com in 2006 and 2008 respectively, and used to own some stake in the site, have offloaded their full stake in the portal through this deal," Mahesh Murthy, managing partner, Seedfund, tells afaqs!.

Mohit Dubey, chief executive officer, Carwale.com declined to reveal the exact valuation of the site. But as per an industry estimate, the portal could be valued above Rs 100 crore.

Carwale.com receives more than 1.3 million unique visitors and 17 million page views every month. According to an industry estimate, the portal earns up to Rs 8 crore in revenue every year.

Dubey says, "The management structure and day-to-day operations of the site will not get affected with the acquisition." He indicates that acquisition of some stake by India Today could help the site to leverage the traditional and new media properties owned by the media group for advertising the portal.

Axel Springer has also declared that it has acquired 19.1 per cent stake in India Today's e-commerce portal, BagItToday.com. The e-commerce site was launched by India Today last year and was completely owned by it so far.

In an official communiqué, Aroon Purie, founder and chairman of the India Today Group says, "With a population of more than 1.2 billion, India is the most populous democratic country in the world. It also happens to be a very young country - more than half of Indians who actively use the internet are younger than 25 years old. That holds the promise of considerable monetization potential, which we want to exploit in cooperation with our partner, Axel Springer in the future."

Axel Springer owns more than 80 online properties, including a few classifieds advertising websites, such as Stepstone.com (jobs site) and Immonet.de (Real-estate portal). It operates in more than 35 countries and owns more than 230 newspapers, including Fakt and Bild and magazines such as Auto Bild, Computers Bild and Sports Bild. The German company earns more than 25 per cent of its total revenue from digital business.