Would you even consider buying a car online? FinanceAcar thinks a lot of people actually will, in time, and has built an online car marketplace and price comparison website to cater to their needs.
The company today announced that it has raised a round of financing, the size of which was not disclosed, from Anthemis Group and angel investors like Dominic Collins (former Group Director of Autotrader.co.uk and currently CEO of Orange Digital) and Christoph Janz, who built one of Europe’s first price comparison websites (DealPilot.com, acquired by Shopping.com).
FinanceAcar, a Seedcamp London 2010 winner, basically enables car buyers to choose and compare their vehicle, get the best monthly price available, apply for finance online and, if approved, have the car delivered to their door by a dealer.
Says Sean Park of Anthemis, who has joined FinanceAcar’s board as an observer:
“The car industry is one of the last offline bastions yet to offer a full online buying journey to the mass market. This is because people have always been forced to shop based on a list price even though as much as 80% of them actually want a monthly price based on finance.”
FinanceAcar says recent research from CAP Gemini shows that 41 percent of consumers want buy their cars online. I’m dubious about that claim, although I guess there are some people who would be interesting in taking that route (pun intended). For what it’s worth, FinanceAcar says it has received nearly 700,000 price enquiries in the last 12 months.
The startup was founded by Mark Peatey and Nadim Saad.