European car rental comparison startup Happycar has raised a further €2.6 million million in funding. Backing the company’s third round are lead investor Creathor Venture, HR Ventures, Capnamic Ventures, NWZ Digital, and TruVenturo.
Noteworthy, however, is that previous investor, Rocket Internet’s GFC, has not participated and I’ve since learned that GFC actually disposed of its shares in Happycar late last year to Creathor Venture after Rocket invested in a related industry startup, creating a potential conflict of interest.
Since I last covered Happycar, then CEO Alexander Wessels has left the self-styled metasearch engine and has been replaced by Robert Schütze, who was previously at Rocket Internet’s Zalando where he was Country Manager for the UK and Poland.
Operating in Germany, Netherlands,, France, Spain, Italy, and Poland — but targeting car rentals worldwide — Happycar is a typical metasearch engine play. It partners with around 1,000 international and local car rental companies to let you search and compare offers in order to find the best price. In addition to price, you can also filter results by type of car and insurance packages.
“Instead of having to scan various car rental providers’ websites to find the best price and offer, Happycar enables customers to compare various offers from car rental providers on one platform with a comprehensive and transparent overview,” is how previous CEO Alexander Wessels explained it last year.
New CEO Schütze says in a statement: “We are happy our investors have confidence in us as a team and are satisfied with the development of our company. We also greatly appreciate the opportunity to further expand our business into new markets. Additionally, we continuously work on improving our product to maximise customer satisfaction, and to bring more transparency into our processes”.