Tekion, a cloud technology company and provider of SaaS retail operating platform Automotive Retail Cloud said on Wednesday that it has received its Series C financing round of $150 million at over a $1-billion valuation.

A press statement from the company said the funding round was led by Advent International (“Advent”), global private equity investors, with participation from Index Ventures, Exor (the holding company of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Ferrari), Airbus Ventures and FM Capital.

Tekion’s other key investors from the automotive industry include General Motors, BMW iVentures and Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi Alliance Ventures. “Today’s consumers receive outstanding personalized retail experiences from companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Disney. Why shouldn’t they expect the same in their vehicle acquisition and service needs? We believe Tekion will be the trailblazer for enabling the modernization of the entire consumer journey and providing the best experiences and operational efficiencies. It is time to even the playing field for the automotive retail industry.” said Jay Vijayan, CEO of Tekion.

The Chennai-born Vijayan was the CIO of Tesla before launching his venture, Tekion. His stint at Tesla involved building the entire digital and information technology systems. Tekion's APAC headquarters is based out of Bengaluru while it has a development centre in Chennai. Majority of the R&D work is carried out in India offices.

Tekion started on-boarding dealers on its Automotive Retail Cloud platform in Q3 2019 and has partnered with manufacturers and dealers of all sizes. In addition to advanced analytics, Tekion provides Open APIs and gives dealers access to their data to glean valuable insights to help improve processes and experiences for their customers. Tekion also provides the enterprise-scale capability for larger dealer groups, with features such as centralised accounting and a highly secure data repository with the ability to access data from anywhere.

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