Car Finance Disruptor Carmoola Secures £146 Million Funding to Fuel UK Expansion and Transform the Used Car Finance Market
“We are incredibly excited about this new investment. It's a testament to the hard work of our team and the clear value we bring to car buyers by doing things differently.”
Carmoola Leadership Team (Photo Credit: Carmoola)
This significant raise follows an £8.5 million Series A round and a £95 million debt facility (both secured in February of 2023), and reflects the confidence inspired by both Carmoola’s performance to date and the strength of its innovative approach to simplifying car finance for UK consumers.
The funding will be used to reach even more car buyers, enabling Carmoola to make further inroads into the UK’s £100 billion used car finance market, which is forecast to grow to £190 billion by 2027*. Coupled with a disciplined approach to capital allocation, this investment will accelerate Carmoola’s journey to profitability.
Investment came from US-based FinTech specialists QED Investors; VentureFriends; InMotion Ventures, the investment arm of JLR (Jaguar Land Rover); New York-based investors AlleyCorp; and Kyiv-based u.ventures.
Carmoola, which launched its app in March 2022, is transforming the cumbersome and complex car finance market by putting the power back in the hands of buyers and removing the knowledge imbalance that comes with traditional and outdated lending models. The company already boasts an average Trustpilot rating of 4.9 out of 5, from over 1,100 verified customer reviews.
This investment takes Carmoola’s total funding to date to £146 million (including a £95 million debt facility).
Aidan Rushby, co-founder and CEO of Carmoola, said: “We are incredibly excited about this new investment. It's a testament to the hard work of our team and the clear value we bring to car buyers by doing things differently.”
“Carmoola came about because we could see that the used car finance market was broken, but the status quo suited traditional lenders just fine, so nobody was doing anything about it. We saw the opportunity to do better and rebalance the situation in favour of the consumer, and our financial backers shared this vision. Now that we have proven our concept we are ready to bring our product to even more people.”
“Our goal is to make car financing as user-friendly and hassle-free as possible, and this unrelenting focus has already seen us support the purchase of over £46 million worth of cars**. With this new funding, and the support of our investors, we are poised to help even more people buy the car of their dreams.”
Yusuf Özdalga, partner and head of Europe at QED Investors, the backer of finance unicorns Remitly and NuBank, said: “Carmoola is shaking up an industry that had grown and remains complacent, and is addressing the poor customer outcomes and unnecessary hurdles that the incumbents have allowed to take hold.”
“The customer reviews speak for themselves, and show what a real and noticeable impact Carmoola’s customer-first approach is having on people’s lives. It’s clear from this feedback that access to fair, fast and affordable car finance is about more than buying a vehicle; it supports people’s lives and livelihoods. More car buyers deserve to experience the Carmoola treatment, and we are delighted to help make this happen.”
Apostolos Apostolakis, founding partner at VentureFriends, said: "We focus on start-ups that have the potential to address a large market and which can quickly hone in on hard-earned differentiation. Carmoola does just that, and the company’s performance since launch is evidence of the team’s skill in identifying and pursuing opportunities at pace and with intent.
“We are founders ourselves, so understand the highs and lows of start-up life only too well. In our experience, companies whose leaders and people focus unwaveringly on doing what’s right for the ultimate user of their product are the ones that can grow sustainably, and Carmoola is such a business.”
Marshall Porter, general partner at AlleyCorp, said: "Carmoola is delivering a ground-breaking customer experience in an industry where that experience has long been a pain, leaving customers to navigate an unnecessarily slow and bureaucratic process to secure a car.
“As a team of former operators and entrepreneurs ourselves, we are focused on solving the pains that incumbents ignore, and we are proud to back Aidan Rushby and the incredible team at Carmoola as they deliver a much-loved customer experience that also leverages data in a way that just makes them better than the incumbents."
With the UK’s used car market growing year on year, and recovering towards pre-pandemic levels***, the new funding will be immediately deployed to scale the business to reach and serve even more car buyers. At the same time, user experience and service will remain at the forefront - a commitment that has earned Carmoola independently verified ratings of 4.9 out of 5 from over 1,000 of its satisfied customers.
