Cars24 is going big on retail in a risky bet

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Editor's note: In online used car sales, Cars24 is by far the biggest fish, valued at $3.3 billion after its latest funding round, a Series G investment announced late last year. In both value and revenue, it outstrips its rivals. But the competition is heating up.  Companies like Spinny, CarDekho and Droom also raised funds around the same time last year, each breaking past the $1 billion mark in valuation. CarTrade—the oldest of the lot—went public in August last year. In that context, Cars24 knows it needs to show growth and it is acting on it.  The result is that the Gurugram-based company has shifted focus to a new business model.  Cars24’s core business for years involved buying used cars from individual owners and selling them to dealerships, what it called customer to business, or C2B. By securing demand from dealers for used stock, it could avoid holding inventory bought from customers for too long, which made the business more consistent but also limited margins.  For a couple of years or more, the company has been playing with a different vertical, where …