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Patrick Grove, CEO of Catcha Group, poses for a portrait at the company’s Kuala Lumpur headquarters. [+] On September 5, 2016, Malaysia.
Bloomberg/Charles Pertwee
Carsome Group, a Malaysian used automobile marketplace, announced Tuesday that it has joined with Catcha Group, a company headed by entrepreneur Patrick Grove, to take Australian-listed rival iCar Asia private in a $200 million deal.
In the planned arrangement, Carsome will buy 19.9% of iCar Asia from Catcha in a share swap, making Catcha a Carsome shareholder. After that, the two will buy the remaining 80.1 percent of iCar Asia.
The deal comes as Carsome is rumored to be seeking a $2 billion IPO in the United States, either through a backdoor listing with a special purpose acquisition company or through a traditional IPO.
In a statement, Eric Cheng, cofounder and group CEO of Carsome, said, “This is the first step toward consolidation to become the largest digital automotive group in terms of revenue, user base, largest live listings, and finest end-to-end fulfillment capacity in the region.”
This year, the combined firm expects to generate $1 billion in sales from its online used-car buying and selling platforms in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore. According to Carsome, the deal solidifies the company’s position as Southeast Asia’s most valuable digital car marketplace and Malaysia’s first tech unicorn.
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“We are excited to join Carsome as shareholders and collaborate with Eric and his team to enhance our leadership position,” said Grove, founder and group CEO of Catcha. “We look forward to helping the combined organization dominate the $55 billion digital automobile industry in Southeast Asia in the years ahead.”
Grove, 46, owns shares in the privately owned Catcha Group and the publicly traded Frontier Digital Ventures in Australia. He sold on-demand video firm Iflix to Chinese internet giant Tencent for $50 million in May 2020. Grove was placed No. 45 on the Malaysia Rich List, which was published last month, with a net worth of $365 million./nRead More

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