INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
online car repair marketplace, has secured £4 million in new funding
Backing the startup is Shell Ventures — the corporate venture arm of Shell — in addition to chairman Sir Trevor Chinn (who previously
chaired the boards ofAA, Kwik Fit and RAC), Active Partners, and Venrex Investment Management.Launched in 2011 by former investment bankers
Al Preston and Ian Griffiths, WhoCanFixMyCar.com claims to be the biggest online marketplace in the U.K
for matching car owners with repair garages
Specifically, the company, which has offices in Newcastle upon Tyne, London and Kiev, operates a local garage and mechanic online comparison
service, allowing drivers to post jobs and receive quotes from local garages and mechanics.The platform currently has 11,500 garages
registered to the site, and says it has processed 1 million repair requests from U.K
drivers and receives circa 60,000 new job requests from drivers every month.This, I&m told, has seen single site garages obtaining around
600 new customers per year on average through WhoCanFixMyCar, with top regional garage groups securing 3,000-4,000 bookings per
year.Furthermore, Shell investment via Shell Ventures follows the development of the Shell Helix Service Specialist Network, a recently
launched scheme which allows independent workshops on the WhoCanFixMyCar.com site to be officially associated with Shell
In other words, strike this up as potentially quite a strategic investment for Shell.Armed with a cash injection, Al Preston, co-founder of
WhoCanFixMyCar.com, says that the plan it to keep scaling the startup activities and consolidate its position in the UK.& We are also
focusing on new products and solutions that will further benefit our garage network and provide car owners with a better, richer experience
when it comes to car maintenance and repairs,& he says.On the surface,ClickMechanic can be considered a similar-sized competitor, although
it operates a different model, more akin to ‘Uber for car mechanics,& by offering instant quotes and then putting the job out to a curated
network of garages and mechanics who can choose to accept or reject
In contrast, WhoCanFixMyCar is a two sided marketplace in the truest sense, letting you request quotes and compare reviews, with much more
emphasis on lead generation from the garage point of view.Article updated to clarify how WhoCanFixMyCar and ClickMechanic operated very
different models, despite being competitors on the consumer-facing side.
