Online car sales companies merge

Two of China's online second-hand car trading platforms have announced plans to merge.

Companies clcw.com.cn and kx.cn agreed to work together to promote a customer-to-business model, known as C2B, to tackle the difficulty of individuals selling cars.

Clcw.com.cn has established nine branches across the country and accumulated more than 10,000 car dealers on its platform. Meanwhile, kx.cn has a strong brand influence and regional operation management.

Clcw.com has witnessed rapid growth since it was established in 2015. With 16,000 vehicles sold via its website and app last year, founder Xie Lei said its annual transactions have reached a value of 640 million yuan ($92.4 million).

Kaixin is the first online platform to adopt a C2B model to facilitate the selling of used cars from individuals to used-car dealers. With nine years of development, Kaixin became an industry giant and claims 8.8 percent of the used car dealing market in Shanghai.

"C2B can help customers sell cars at a reasonable price. It is the only model that suits China's actual conditions and caters to Chinese car-buyers' need," Xie said.

Xie said the newly-merged company will establish four operation centers nationwide, and more than 300 offline stores that provide related services in finance, insurance and ancillary products selling.

The company aims to reach a turnover of 12 billion yuan with 200,000 cars sold on its platform in 2017.