The company seeks to ease buying of used cars in the country, while building revenue streams around Nigeria’s used car market. Nigerian based tech startup, Cars45, has raised a $5 million capital funds from an international company, Frontier Cars Group, a holding company with Balderton Capital and EchoVC as its major backers.
It is a move by the Nigerian start-up to participate in the fast-growing used-vehicle space in the country, which is currently estimated at US$3.45bn by the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC).
The platform runs a business model which allows used car sellers to obtain a free online quote, create time service history at an inspection centre, and then make an offer. If the offer is accepted, Cars45 make the payment to the car owner’s bank account within 45 minutes.
Mr Etop Ikpe, CEO of Cars45, stated that there are potentials for the platform to build out other revenue streams around Nigeria’s used car market, including inspection services, financing, and online auto research similar to Kelly’s Bluebook model.
one of the Car45.com inspection centres in Lagos. (iTY Tech)
“We believe the opportunities are there to expand into other African cities with high vehicle sales traffic…and to operate similar models in emerging markets.”
In a report released on Monday, May 15, 2017, by some local newspaper indicated that new car importation into the country has dropped by 67 per cent.
Toyota Nigeria Limited (TNL) was quoted to have said 15,031 new vehicles were imported into the country by various dealers in 2015 as against 45,618 last year.
The industry players stated that there is an increasing patronage of the used-vehicle markets by Nigerians who are hoping to get a car, while the current tariff on imported cars is discouraging buying of new cars due to high cost of imported cars.
The NADDC also noted the Nigeria imports over 300,000 units of used-vehicle annually into the country.
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