A Manchester based online car rental company has gone global after raising £534,000 in funding from investors.
Stressfreecarrental.com, which raised the investment last November led by DSW Ventures, has rolled out versions of its website to serve Spain, France, Portugal, Brazil, Turkey, Holland and Italy.
It is now planning more international expansion with German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, and Latvian versions of its website all expected to go live in the coming weeks.
Since the investment the brand has also announced a series of partnerships including with travel agency Ramsey World Travel, price comparison site SkyScanner and London Luton Airport.
Angel investor Harry Dixon, former technical director at Rentalcars.com, has also invested in the business.
Stressfreecarrental.com was launched in 2020 by entrepreneurs John Charnock (pictured), David Mathews and Rory Powers, who exited their last venture, Inventive IT, a booking platform focused on the airport services market.
As part of the investment, travel industry veteran James Jennings joined as chairman while Tom Knopek, who has had a 30-year career in the car rental industry, was appointed as non-executive director.
Founder and CEO John Charnock said: “We’ve seen significant growth over the past year which was accelerated by the successful investment round.
“Since then we have broadened our scope by launching foreign language versions of our website which has led to us serving customers across much of Europe and beyond.
“This continues to be a key strategy and we are confident the addition of further languages to the site in the coming weeks will help us to reach still more customers in a widening number of territories.
“This coupled with the successful partnerships we have agreed with SkyScanner, London Luton Airport and Ramsey World Travel has helped us to exceed our targets and left us extremely well placed for further growth across the coming months.”
Stressfreecarrental.com is the eighth company to join DSW Ventures’ portfolio, which includes other online consumer brands such as One Utility Bill and ACAI Outdoorwear.