Cazana sets sight on global expansion with £1m Crowd Fundraise
Vehicle data company Cazana.com has opened up a part of their Series-A funding round to their users and fans with a £1m crowd-fundraise on Crowdcube.
Cazana, and subsidiary Car and Classic are the UK’s most popular free car listing sites with over 2 million visitors monthly
This funding is being used to support expansion into the US market, the business is predicted to hit £22 million in revenue by 2022
The raise is being led by Passion Capital, backers of Monzo and Nested.
Disruptive AI start-up Cazana.com has today launched a £1 million crowd-fundraise on crowdcube.
The raise is set to be led by Passion Capital, along with industry heavyweights David Hammond and ex-RAC Managing Director Robert Diamond, with existing Cazana customers and motoring enthusiasts also expected to take a stake.
The funding will support the global expansion of the business, as well as accelerating monetisation of Cazana’s B2B sales. It will also be used to develop Cazana’s growing suite of services, including the newly acquired Car & Classic website.
The home-grown start-up, which was launched in 2013 and uses AI and big data to provide customers with information on modern and classic cars, is predicted to hit £22 million in revenue by 2022.
Cazana also offers free online car checking and valuation services for customers, allowing them to access real-time values of vehicles along with previously unseen history information. Their database, which covers every car on the road, also provides insights to businesses to inform their lending and pricing strategy. The Financial Ombudsman also recommend the use of Cazana for insurance total loss valuations with many of the UK’s motor insurers now benefiting from Cazana’s accurate, whole market valuations.
The acquisition of Car & Classic in 2018 enabled Cazana to pool two powerful digital motoring databases. Car & Classic is Europe’s largest classic car community as well as the world’s largest classified website for classic cars, facilitating the sale of more than 480 million classic cars in 2018. This latest round of finance aims to boost the reach of both platforms.
Tom Woods, CEO of Cazana comments:
“This is a time of revolution in the car industry and we’re incredibly excited about this funding round and what it means for Cazana and our customers. Our acquisition of Car & Classic last year massively increased our reach and the services we provide to consumers and businesses. The classic car market is a very lucrative sector of the automotive industry, with £25.4 billion worth of classic cars transacted annually worldwide.
“With this raise, we will accelerate our plans to secure a stronger foothold in US markets and well as investing in our consumer facing platforms. It’s fantastic to have such an esteemed group of investor participating in this round and we look forward to our customers and motoring sector experts joining their ranks as part of this crowdfunding.”
The past twelve months have seen the Cazana team hit a range of key milestones. They secured the seal of approval from the Financial Ombudsman, who now use Cazana’s data to help settle insurance disputes, the business won two awards for innovation from the Car Finance Awards and International Asset Finance Awards, and also signed up two of the UK’s top 5 dealer groups.