Rocket Internet’s Carmudi, A Car Classifieds Site, Grabs $10M In New Funding To Expand In Asia

Carmudi, a car classified ads site backed by Rocket Internet, has raised $10 million to expand its operations in Asia. Investors include Tengelmann Ventures, the investment arm of the German retail giant. The site’s network currently operates in eleven countries, six of which are in Asia (Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam).

Carmudi, which launched last year, claims that the number of its listings is growing 200% a month and will soon reach a total of 100,000 around the world.

In Asia, Carmudi competes with local operators as well as Malaysia-based iCar Asia, which is backed by Australian sites Carsales.com. iCar Asia is currently the largest network of car classifieds sites in Southeast Asia, though its rapid expansion has come at a cost. BRW reported that in the fiscal year ending June 30, the company lost $2.78 million, far above its revenue of $551,00. Its CEO Damon Reilly said, however, that iCar Asia’s current focus is rapid expansion.

That is similar to Rocket Internet’s business strategy of launching in emerging markets, especially those with high mobile penetration, and growing as rapidly as possible with support from major investors like Tengelmann. This has the added benefit of allowing Rocket Internet’s portfolio companies, which include Easy Taxi and fashion retailer Zalora, to lay down groundwork for a logistics network that benefits all of the Berlin-based incubator’s properties.

In a statement, Carmudi co-founder and global managing director Stefan Haubold said, “The funding will help us drive our growth even further, enabling us to become the number one online vehicle marketplace in Asia. Eventually, I envision Carmudi to be a one-stop shop for all car-related topics, be it car reviews, news, tips or simple advice.”

In Just A Few Minutes, SpaceX Will Attempt To Launch A Reusable Rocket — Watch Now! (Update: It’s Over)

Quick! Tune in!

SpaceX is about to attempt something pretty historic: launching a rocket in such a way that much of it can be reused in later launches.

If the launch is successful, the payload of the rocket will spend a few days cruising to the International Space Station, then drop off a bunch of supplies. The “first stage”(the largest — and often the most expensive — engine component) of the rocket, meanwhile, will break away in a controlled fall back towards earth to (hopefully) be used again, with a pair of landing legs being deployed on the way down.

Even if the landing legs deploy properly, the landing is aimed for the water… which the legs can’t actually stand up on. They’ll simulate a landing to test that their landing thrusters seem to work — but in the end, it’ll just fall right into the water. This is more about testing to make sure the process works than trying to actually get this thing to make a perfect landing, but it’d still be damn neat to watch — alas, we probably won’t get to see that bit in the live stream.

I’ve embedded both NASA and SpaceX’s stream below, because each offers some pretty amazing angles and insight. If you watch both simultaneously, you probably want to mute one or the other.

Update – 12:26: The rocket launched on schedule at 12:25 p.m. pacific, and is currently en route to the ISS.

Update – 12:40: Success! Looks like everything went smoothly with the first segment of the launch. The rocket launched smoothly (despite bad weather), and will spend the next few days cruising to the ISS. As such, the stream is now over, so we’ve removed it. We’ll know in a few days if the test landing process went as smoothly.

Update – 5:00 pm: Elon Musk has tweeted to announce that the first stage has landed safely in the Atlantic.

Neither NASA nor SpaceX has put up a pre-cut video of today’s launch just yet – I’ll add it here as soon as they do. In its place, here’s a video of the Falcon 9 doing a short-distance test flight — it takes off from its launch pad, hovers for a second, and then lands itself safely a few feet away from its original location.