For most of the past decade, the story of India’s used car market was essentially a story about its largest cities. Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad drove volumes. National trends were, in many ways, just metropolitan trends dressed up in aggregate numbers.
 

That is no longer true. According to the Cars24 Gears of Growth Report 2025, Tier-2 cities now account for 62% of all used car sales in India, with metro cities contributing the remaining 38%. The centre of gravity has shifted, and it has brought with it a fundamentally different kind of buyer with different priorities, different budgets, and different ideas about what a car should do.

Delhi loses ground, Karnataka and Gujarat post some of the largest gains on record
The numbers from the Cars24 Gears of Growth Report tell a clear story about where momentum now lives in the Indian used car market. Delhi’s share of national sales dropped from 13.8% in 2024 to 5.8% in 2025. Haryana fell from 10.7% to 5.6%. These are not marginal corrections. They represent a structural rebalancing of where demand is being generated.

Meanwhile, states that were once considered secondary markets have posted some of the largest gains. Karnataka grew from 10% to 16% in a single year. Gujarat surged from 8.7% to 13.1%. Maharashtra consolidated its position as the single largest market, growing from 16.4% to 20.1%. Tamil Nadu and Telangana both roughly doubled their shares.

State-wise market share: 2024 vs 2025

Source: Cars24 Gears of Growth Report 2025

The practical implication is significant. A market once dependent on the consumption patterns of northern metros is now drawing from a far wider and more diverse base of buyers across western, southern, and central India.

Metro and non-metro buyers are not buying the same car for the same reason
What makes this shift analytically interesting is that metro and non-metro buyers are not simply buying the same cars in different locations. They represent genuinely distinct demand profiles, shaped by different economic circumstances, road conditions, income levels, and expectations of car ownership.

Share of used car sales by geography (2025)

Metro vs Tier-2: How buyer profiles differ 

Metro buyers tend to treat used cars as a stepping stone to a better vehicle. They upgrade more frequently, are more willing to pay for convenience features like automatic transmissions, and lean toward SUVs and premium hatchbacks. For this segment, the used car market functions as an aspirational ladder.

Non-metro buyers approach the market differently. For many, this is their first car purchase. The decision is driven by functional need: reliable daily transportation, low maintenance costs, fuel efficiency, and strong parts availability at local service centres. Longer ownership cycles mean resale value and durability matter more than style.

According to the Cars24 Gears of Growth Report, non-metro markets also show notably higher financing adoption, close to 58%, compared to around 50% in metro cities. This reflects both the income profile of first-time buyers and the growing reach of digital lending platforms into smaller cities.

Model preferences reveal two distinct sets of priorities, not just two price points
The difference in buyer profiles translates directly into model preferences. The Cars24 Gears of Growth Report data on top-selling models by geography makes the contrast visible.

Top 10 models by geography: Metro vs Non-Metro
 

The Honda City appears in the metro top 10, reflecting urban appetite for sedans despite the segment’s overall decline. It does not appear in the non-metro list at all. The Kwid, on the other hand, ranks fourth in non-metro markets, driven by its entry-level price point and low cost of ownership.

The Nexon is the top-selling model in both geographies, which speaks to its broad appeal across price points and use cases. But the divergence begins immediately after. Metros rank the Baleno second, a premium hatchback with feature-rich trims and strong automatic penetration. Non-metro markets place the Grand i10 second, a model valued for its simplicity, low running costs, and widespread service network.

The Honda City appears in the metro top 10, reflecting urban appetite for sedans despite the segment’s overall decline. It does not appear in the non-metro list at all. The Kwid, on the other hand, ranks fourth in non-metro markets, driven by its entry-level price point and low cost of ownership.

Tamil Nadu leads on spending, Uttar Pradesh reflects a value-first buyer base
Average selling prices across the top five states in the Cars24 Gears of Growth Report reveal how vehicle mix and buyer profiles translate into spending patterns.

Average selling price by state: top 5 markets (2025)

Source: Cars24 Gears of Growth Report 2025. Values in Rs lakh

Tamil Nadu leads on average selling price at Rs 5.49 lakh, supported by strong mid-to-premium demand and a higher concentration of newer vehicles. Uttar Pradesh sits lowest at Rs 4.90 lakh, reflecting its value-oriented buyer base and a higher share of older, entry-level vehicles.

The Cars24 Gears of Growth Report notes that ASP variation reflects vehicle mix and age more than transaction volume alone. A state can be growing rapidly in volume while still trading at lower average prices if its buyers are primarily first-time purchasers entering at the entry end of the market.

Three forces turning smaller cities into the engine of national used car demand

Rising incomes and first-time buyers
Expanding Tier-2 cities and rising incomes among salaried and self-employed households have created a new class of first-time car buyers. For these buyers, a used car is not a compromise. It is a considered financial decision that maximises value while managing risk on an unfamiliar purchase.

Digital platforms reducing the trust gap
Historically, used car buying in smaller cities relied heavily on local dealer relationships and word of mouth. Digital platforms with certified inspections and transparent pricing have changed this, giving non-metro buyers access to the same quality assurance that metro buyers have had for longer.

SME activity and trade-driven demand
Gujarat’s sharp rise from 8.7% to 13.1% market share is not purely a consumer story. The Cars24 Gears of Growth Report points to strong SME activity, expanding trade hubs, and rising digital adoption across industrial clusters as key drivers. In many non-metro markets, vehicles serve dual purposes, moving families and moving goods, which creates a more consistently motivated demand base than pure urban consumption.

Conclusion: Tier-2 India is not catching up to metros; it is building its own market
The used car market’s geographic diversification is not a temporary phenomenon. It reflects structural changes in India’s economy: the growth of Tier-2 cities, the expansion of digital financial infrastructure into smaller markets, and the rising aspirations of a middle class that is no longer concentrated in a handful of metros.

For the industry, this means the national market is becoming more resilient. No single state or city can now determine whether it has a good year. For buyers in smaller cities, it means access to a more organised, transparent, and well-stocked market than was available even three years ago.
The Cars24 Gears of Growth Report 2025, based on data from over 33 million users, captures this transition at a meaningful scale. Tier-2 India is not catching up to the metros. It is building its own version of the used car market, on its own terms.

About the Data
All data in this article is sourced exclusively from the Cars24 Gears of Growth Report 2025, based on Cars24 internal transaction data comprising over 33 million users as of December 2025. This article does not use any external data sources.

Uncia Technologies Private Limited today announced the close of an INR 25 crores funding round, its first, from Pavestone VC – a Hyderabad-based venture capital firm. The investment marks a deliberate inflection point for a company that over the last 5 years, chose to build its product, prove its market, and earn institutional trust before seeking external capital.

The funding will accelerate Uncia’s growth in India while simultaneously funding the company’s entry into the Middle East, North Africa (MENA), and North American markets. Uncia has also announced its intent to pursue a public listing in the next few years, positioning this round as the first chapter of what the company’s leadership describes as a multi-year journey toward becoming a globally scaled, publicly accountable lending technology institution.

Hari Padmanabhan

“We made a deliberate choice to build before we raised. Every rupee we invested came from the conviction that if we solved the right problem well enough, the market would validate it. Today, we manage over 2 lakh crore rupees cumulatively for some of India’s top NBFCs, and we believe we’ve proven our thesis. This funding is not a beginning but a gear shift. We have the product. We have validation at scale and diversity. Now we have the capital to take this to the world. We’re pleased to partner with Pavestone. Their investment values align closely with our mission, and we look forward to drawing on the strategic insight of their leadership team.” – Hari Padmanabhan, Chairman, Uncia.

In an era defined by heavily funded fintechs and venture-backed growth stories, Uncia represents something increasingly rare: a technology company that chose to let its product do the talking before its pitch deck did. Without external capital, the company had no choice but to be relentlessly precise about what it built, for whom, and why. The result is an AI-native platform suite that today powers loan origination, loan management, and supply chain finance operations for some of India’s most respected financial institutions.

Uncia’s AI-native platforms are designed around a philosophy the company calls ‘self-serve lending infrastructure’: the ability for a financial institution to configure, launch, and manage complex lending products independently, without change requests, IT dependencies, or implementation delays measured in quarters. Over 2 years of dedicated AI research, conducted in collaboration with IIT Madras from Uncia’s base at the IITM Technology Research Park, is now beginning to deliver measurable results. Early adopters among Uncia’s clients are already seeing direct cost efficiencies and smarter underwriting outcomes powered by these models.

“At Pavestone, we focus on backing businesses that are solving structural problems in large enterprises, with a clear path to scale and profitability. The lending ecosystem is expanding rapidly, yet much of the underlying technology remains constrained by legacy systems that cannot support the speed, flexibility, and intelligence lenders now require. Uncia has built a unified, cloud-first platform with embedded AI capabilities that addresses these challenges while enabling rapid deployment and ‘pay-as-you-grow’ scalability. We believe the company is well-positioned to deliver durable value.” – Srikanth Tanikella, Managing Partner, Pavestone Capital.

About Uncia Technologies Private Limited

Uncia Technologies is a Chennai-based AI-Native lending technology company that builds the digital infrastructure powering India’s banks and NBFCs. Founded on the belief that financial institutions deserve technology as sophisticated as the problems they solve, Uncia offers three integrated platforms: UnciaPrime (Loan Origination System), UnciaLeap (Loan Management System), and UnciaFlow (Supply Chain Finance and Digital Lending). The company’s platforms today process over INR 2 Lakh Crore AUM across leading financial institutions, including some of India’s largest and most respected lenders.

About Pavestone VC

Pavestone, a Hyderabad-headquartered VC firm, brings timeless investing principles to modern Venture Capital with a philosophy of supporting committed innovators with smart capital to build real-world value. Pavestone Technology Fund, with an INR 816 Cr corpus, fosters early growth-stage B2B technology companies that solve critical challenges for large public and private enterprises. The fund’s focus is on companies with validated market traction, established product-market fit, and partnerships with anchor clients. They also selectively invest in early-stage ventures pioneering high-impact technologies, targeting significant breakthroughs in enterprise solutions.

Garnier Color Naturals strengthens its association with actor Raveena Tandon and introduces Rasha Thadani in its latest campaign, bringing together a real-life mother-daughter duo to celebrate the brand’s core pillar of trust while celebrating effortless at-home hair color. The campaign marks a natural progression for the brand, blending Garnier Color Naturals’ legacy of trusted, natural-looking hair color with Raveena’s enduring appeal resonating across generations and Rasha’s fresh, new-age relatability.

Garnier Color Naturals Celebrates Mother–Daughter Trust With Raveena Tandon And Rasha Thadani In New Campaign

An iconic star, Raveena, along with her daughter Rasha, brings an effortless warmth and authenticity to the campaign through their real-life bond. The film captures a tender, everyday moment between the two, as Rasha turns to her mother after coloring her hair, seeking her vote of confidence. What follows is a simple yet meaningful exchange that reflects just how reassuring a mother’s validation is for confidence-building. Their natural chemistry and effortless interaction make the moment deeply relatable, reinforcing how beauty choices are often guided by trust, shared experiences, and the comfort of validation.

Sharing her thoughts on the campaign, Raveena Tandon said, “As a mother, there is nothing more meaningful than your child placing their trust in your choices, and nothing more reassuring than seeing them embrace their own with confidence. This campaign beautifully captures that heartfelt, powerful bond. It feels authentic and deeply relatable, mirroring the relationship I share with Rasha. I’ve always believed in choosing what I trust, and Garnier Color Naturals has consistently been that choice for me.”

Sharing her perspective, Rasha Thadani added, “I think we all, in some way, look to our mothers for validation, especially when trying something new. When it comes to beauty, my mom has always been my biggest inspiration and my most honest critic. This campaign felt very close to home because it captures a real moment between us. Seeing how fabulous my mom looked made me want to try Garnier Color Naturals myself.“

Ajay Simha, General Manager, Garnier, said, “Garnier Color Naturals has long been an icon in at-home hair colour, trusted by generations of women for its rich, natural-looking color and ease of use. It is a brand that has been equally loved by mothers and daughters, making Raveena Tandon and Rasha Thadani a natural choice to bring this story to life. At a time when the at-home hair color category is evolving, this campaign builds on our legacy by placing trust at the centre of the conversation. By tapping into the universally relatable mother-daughter dynamic, we aim to make hair color feel more intuitive, reassuring, and relevant for today’s consumers.”

With the new Trust Campaign, Garnier Color Naturals reinforces its leadership in at-home hair color by anchoring the category in trust – the most powerful driver — and bringing together a product loved across generations with a story featuring Raveena Tandon and Rasha Thadani that reflects how women discover, choose, and stand by what works for them.

Instagram link: www.instagram.com/reel/DWJgrnUjLW2/?igsh=Zjhoejc4aG02bGc%3D.

• Red Hat OpenShift is now available on the Google Cloud console

• Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is generally available on Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud 

Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced an expanded collaboration with Google Cloud to help organizations accelerate application modernization and cloud migrations. This expansion introduces Red Hat OpenShift in the Google Cloud console, deeper integrations with Google Cloud services and marks the general availability of Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud.

Today’s announcement reinforces both companies’ shared commitment to provide a comprehensive application platform where enterprises can confidently build, deploy, manage and scale containerized, virtualized and AI applications on Google Cloud. Customers can operate with the assurance that both Red Hat and Google are committed to the performance, security and continued success of applications running on Red Hat OpenShift on Google Cloud.

Enhanced flexibility for workloads on Google Cloud

Red Hat OpenShift is now available within the Google Cloud console. This makes it easier for customers to find the right solution for running their workloads on Google Cloud and guiding users through a more seamless onboarding experience. Key benefits include:

• Streamlined onboarding: Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated users can natively validate Google Cloud prerequisites before transitioning to a guided cluster provisioning flow within the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

• Unified billing and procurement: Organizations can use flexible, pay-as-you-go pricing through Google Cloud Marketplace that counts their Red Hat OpenShift subscription costs against their Google Cloud committed spend.

• Native service integrations: Red Hat OpenShift users can unlock the power of Google-native integrations through jointly engineered and supported integrations with key services such as Google Cloud Secret Manager, Certificate Authority Service and Workload Identity Federation among others.

Modernizing infrastructure with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

Faced with rising costs and increased complexity, organizations need solutions that let them migrate workloads today and modernize at their own pace. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, a built-in capability of Red Hat OpenShift, bridges the gap between legacy infrastructure and modern innovation by unifying traditional virtual machines (VMs) with containers and serverless workloads on a consistent Kubernetes platform. Users benefit from one interface, one toolset and one set of operational practices across all workloads.

Available on Google Cloud C3 bare metal instances, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization enables organizations with direct access to CPU and memory resources for performance-sensitive or licensing-constrained workloads, helping support modernization while maintaining predictable performance in the cloud to achieve:

• Accelerated modernization: Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud brings modern application development processes and tools to VMs, allowing organizations to accelerate the modernization of VM-based applications at their own pace.

• Consistent management across hybrid environments: With a unified operational model, IT teams can consistently manage VMs and containers across on-premises, cloud, and edge environments, improving efficiency and gaining flexibility.

• Simplified migration: Organizations get flexibility to migrate from traditional virtualization with minimal downtime using tools like the migration toolkit for virtualization and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to ease the transition to a modern offering with flexibility to bring these workloads to a consistent hybrid approach with OpenShift and Google Cloud. 

• Enhanced scalability and reliability: Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud enables organizations to gain more predictable performance, elastic scaling, and stronger SLAs, backed by a comprehensive application platform and highly scalable infrastructure.

Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud is a fully managed application platform that allows customers to focus on building and scaling applications that drive their core business. Global Site Reliability Engineers and built-in automation reduce operational overhead and improve efficiencies.

To experience these new capabilities and accelerate the modernization journey, organizations can explore Red Hat OpenShift directly within the Google Cloud console. Additionally, organizations can begin their modernization journey at their own pace with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud.

Supporting Quotes

Mike Barrett, vice president and general manager, Hybrid Cloud Platforms, Red Hat, “Red Hat’s hybrid cloud vision is built on consistency – the ability to run any workload, anywhere, with the same operational model. This extended collaboration with Google Cloud further empowers organizations with comprehensive cloud-native capabilities of Red Hat OpenShift, whether they need to accelerate application development or streamline migration to the cloud. Together, Red Hat and Google provide a clear, unified path for organizations to modernize their entire application portfolio, helping them manage both their traditional VMs and containerized applications on a single platform.”

Nirav Mehta, vice president, Product Management – Google Cloud Compute Platform, Google Cloud, “Our customers are constantly looking for ways to simplify their infrastructure and accelerate innovation without sacrificing performance. We are pleased to deepen our collaboration with Red Hat for OpenShift on Google Cloud. Customers now have a smoother path, enabling them to run both virtualized and containerized workloads consistently on Google Cloud’s global, secure, and performant infrastructure.”

Additional Resources

• Learn more about Red Hat’s collaboration with Google Cloud

• Find Red Hat solutions on Google Cloud Marketplace

• Explore the benefits of Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

• Modernize virtual machines on Google Cloud with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization

• Documentation for OpenShift Virtualization

Connect with Red Hat

• Learn more about Red Hat

• Get more news in the Red Hat newsroom

• Read the Red Hat blog

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About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat is the open hybrid cloud technology leader, delivering a trusted, consistent and comprehensive foundation for transformative IT innovation and AI applications. Its portfolio of cloud, developer, AI, Linux, automation and application platform technologies enables any application, anywhere—from the datacenter to the edge. As the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, Red Hat invests in open ecosystems and communities to solve tomorrow’s IT challenges. Collaborating with partners and customers, Red Hat helps them build, connect, automate, secure and manage their IT environments, supported by consulting services and award-winning training and certification offerings.

Forward-Looking Statements

Except for the historical information and discussions contained herein, statements contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are based on the company’s current assumptions regarding future business and financial performance.  These statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Any forward-looking statement in this press release speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Except as required by law, the company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.