Carmoola has raised £15.5 million equity investment to expand its direct-to-consumer car finance platform.
Carmoola, which launched its app in March 2022, aims to improve what it terms the cumbersome and complex market around lending for used car purchases.
The investment comes from US-based FinTech specialist QED Investors, VentureFriends, InMotion Ventures – the investment arm of Jaguar Land Rover – New York-based investor AlleyCorp and Kyiv-based u.ventures.
It follows an £8.5m Series A round and £95m debt facility, both secured in February 2023, and a £27m seed funding round before that which included the former MD of Google in the UK & Ireland. Carmoola says it will accelerate its journey to profitability.
“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,” said Aidan Rushby, co-founder and CEO.
“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.”
Carmoola says its app has been used to support the purchase of over £46m worth of cars to date.
Yusuf Özdalga, partner and head of Europe at QED Investors, 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.”