WhoCanFixMyCar, the U.K. online vehicle repair marketplace, has secured ₤ 4 million in new financing. Backing the start-up is Shell Ventures– the corporate endeavor arm of Shell– in addition to chairman Sir Trevor Chinn (who formerly chaired the boards ofAA, Kwik Fit and RAC), Active Partners, and Venrex Investment Management.Launched in 2011 by previous financial investment bankers Al Preston and Ian Griffiths, WhoCanFixMyCar.com declares to be the most significant online marketplace in the U.K. for matching automobile owners with repair garages. Specifically, the company, which has offices in Newcastle upon Tyne, London and Kiev, runs a regional garage and mechanic online comparison service, permitting drivers to post jobs and receive quotes from regional garages and mechanics.The platform currently has actually 11,500 garages registered to the site, and says it has processed 1 million repair requests from U.K. motorists and gets circa 60,000 brand-new task demands from drivers every month.This, I’m told, has seen single site garages obtaining around 600 new clients annually usually through WhoCanFixMyCar, with top regional garage groups protecting 3,000-4,000 reservations per year.Furthermore, Shell’s investment via Shell Ventures follows the advancement of the Shell Helix Service Professional Network
, a just recently released plan which allows independent workshops on the WhoCanFixMyCar.com site to be formally associated with Shell. To puts it simply, strike this up as possibly quite a tactical investment for Shell.Armed with a cash injection, Al Preston, co-founder of WhoCanFixMyCar.com, says that the strategy it to keep scaling the start-up’s activities and combine its position in the UK.” We are likewise concentrating on brand-new products and solutions that will even more benefit our garage network and provide automobile owners with a better, richer experience when it pertains to cars and truck repair and maintenance,” he says.On the surface, ClickMechanic can be thought about a similar-sized competitor, although it
runs a various design, more comparable to’Uber for automobile mechanics,’by using instant quotes and after that putting the job out to a curated network of garages and mechanics who can opt to accept or turn down. On the other hand, WhoCanFixMyCar is a two sided market in the truest sense, letting you demand quotes and compare reviews, with far more focus on list building from the garage’s point of view.Article updated to clarify how WhoCanFixMyCar and ClickMechanic operated really various models, in spite of being rivals on the consumer-facing side.
Leave a Reply