Finance a Car Closes Investment to Reinvent Car Buying
LONDON, August 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --
FinanceAcar.co.uk, the world's first online car marketplace that enables car buyers to compare and get the best monthly price for a new car, has announced that it recently closed a round of funding led by Anthemis Group. Several other angel investors include Dominic Collins, who was Group Director of Autotrader.co.uk and is now CEO of Orange Digital and Christoph Janz, a serial angel investor who built one of Europe's first European price comparison websites. Both of them have joined FinanceAcar as advisors and Sean Park, partner at Anthemis has joined the board as an observer.
Anthemis Group invests in companies that leverage technology to build innovative and disruptive financial businesses making FinanceAcar a natural fit for their portfolio. Indeed, FinanceAcar seeks to reinvent car shopping for the 80% of people that buy a car based on a monthly finance budget (spending c. £14 billion/year in the UK). The website enables a car buyer to choose/compare their vehicle, get the best monthly price available, apply for finance online and, if approved, have the car delivered by a dealer to their door.
Finance A Car, a Seedcamp 2010 winner, was founded by Mark Peatey and Nadim Saad who spotted a gap in the car buying market and combined their experience of launching and growing successful websites such as itv.com and large comparison websites. The investment by Anthemis is timely as recent research confirms that car shoppers want to buy online. Autotrader recently announced that surveys of its users show that 33% of people are ready to buy a car online whilst Capgemini's survey of 8,000 car buyers found that 41% of people were likely or very likely to buy their new car using an end-to-end online car buying process (Cars Online 10/11, Listening to the Voice of the Consumer).
Nadim Saad said, "Anthemis is the perfect investor for us. Their previous success as an investment group and their vision to play a big part in revolutionising consumer finance over the next decade is a big vote of confidence in our mission to reinvent car buying and car finance." Sean Park of Anthemis explained, "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. We were attracted to FinanceAcar because their technology and approach allows them to create a much more intuitive shopping experience. It provides buyers with the cheapest monthly price for the car that they want whilst also placing their finance application with a provider most likely to approve them."
About FinanceAcar
Finance A car (http://www.financeacar.co.uk) is a UK online car marketplace. It was voted by Seedcamp (one of Europe's largest groups of tech investors) as one of the top 10 startups in Europe in 2010 and is a Microsoft "Startup of the day" company. It is the UK's first car finance marketplace and it enables car buyers to choose their new car, compare millions of monthly prices from dealers and top UK finance companies, apply for finance, and, once approved, have the car delivered to their door.
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