Motorway, is a UK startup that enables skilled automobile sellers to bid in an public sale for privately-owned automobiles on the market. The startup has had speedy success by eradicating plenty of friction within the course of. It’s now raised £48m / $67.7m in a Series B spherical led by Index Ventures, together with new buyers BMW i Ventures and Unbound. Existing buyers Latitude and Marchmont Ventures additionally participated. The funding can be used to increase its platform and develop the present 160-strong staff.
The startup permits customers to promote their automobile for as much as £1,000, by importing its particulars through a smartphone. Over 3,000 skilled automobile sellers then bid for the automobile in a each day on-line public sale. The highest supply wins the automobile, which is then collected totally free by the profitable seller inside 24 hours.
Motorway says it has offered 65,000 automobiles since its launch in 2017 and seen gross sales hit £50m in May 2021 alone, £2.5m of transactions a day, and greater than 4,000 accomplished automobile gross sales a month. With solely 5% of all automobiles within the UK offered on-line proper now, there’s loads of headroom for this market to develop.
Tom Leathes, CEO of Motorway, stated: “For half a century, inefficient offline processes have led to bad deals and a bad experience for both car sellers and car dealers. Motorway has fundamentally changed a broken experience where everyone ends up dissatisfied – and we’ve transformed it with a superior online experience where everybody wins. Cutting out the middlemen leaves both the consumer and car dealer with a better deal, all from home and without the stress. Our incredible growth so far is testament to our focus on delivering more value through technology – and this investment will provide us with the fuel to take Motorway to the next level.”
Danny Rimer, Partner at Index Ventures, stated: “We’re always looking to invest in companies that are truly disrupting an industry and meeting a real customer need. We have found that in Motorway. The team has built an incredibly powerful platform, underpinned by great technology and a deep understanding of the challenges both consumers and car dealers face. Motorway has quickly become the first port of call for tens of thousands of people selling their car.”
Motorway beforehand raised £14m in enterprise funding because it was based by Tom Leathes, Harry Jones and Alex Buttle in 2017.
Speaking to me over interview Leathes added: “COVID has been a real accelerator of something that was already happening. The car industry is moving online and that’s partly about people buying their next car online, but it’s also about dealers changing their behavior, how they do business, where they buy their cars. It forced that change which they resisted for a long time, and now they’re embracing it, so it’s a fundamental shift in the industry. And this is why we see such a massive opportunity to provide the rails to help both sides of the marketplace to move online.”
Rimer added: “It’s rare that you have founders who have worked together across multiple successful and less successful startups who have that scar tissue and success, and are now going for a much bigger opportunity. The business model is really an important one for us because instead of owning inventory and then having to get rid of your inventory, sort of like the difference between Nat-a-Porter and Farfetch. Motorway’s marketplace is just like Farfetch – they don’t have any inventory, which means that just by merely making that platform happen for buyers and sellers, they win. So there’s a lot less risk associated with what the money is going to be used for when building the business.”
