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Harare – A new tech start-up venture, www.carzar.co.za that is backed by Silvertree Capital – the investment firm behind PriceCheck – has gone live, aiming to help sellers and buyers of pre-owned vehicles in South Africa to transact and meet on a digital market platform.
Silvertree Capital is the venture capital that is also behind tech start-up www.cybercellar.co.za.
It was not immediately clear how much has been invested in the new start-up
South Africa is the most favoured destination and hub for tech start-up funders, according to a report released in February this year.
The report, African Tech Start-ups Funding Report, highlighted that SA attracted the highest amount of $54.5m in money channeled to start-up in 2015.
Carzar.co.za is a new tech start-up that is aimed at boosting car sellers online and that seeks to make it easy for South Africans to sell and also buy vehicles on the internet.
The tech start-up offers “stats-based pricing with national data and clever algorithms” that offer consumers a fair, safe and convenient way to “offload their vehicles to CarZar with same-day” payment.
Michael Muller, a management consultant for PwC and McKinsey and Fernando Pinheiro, a Brazilian civil and industrial engineer are co-founders to carzar.co.za.
“With internet connectivity in South African constantly on the rise, more and more consumers are utilising services provided online or through mobile apps.
“This opens a series of opportunities in different industries which have not innovated much in the last few decades,” said Pinheiro, who is also joint managing director for the company.
He said the price gap between new and used cars was also widening and added that this was making second hand cars a very attractive option as new cars are now out of reach for many people.
Experts say trends in the car transport market are changing as new disruptions and tech-start-ups aimed for the market take root in the industry and these include sharing and vehicle selling applications.
“People are changing the way they use cars from owning to borrowing a car or sharing a ride. Major car manufacturers are looking into models which allow people to borrow cars,” say experts.
Nigeria and Kenya are closely behind, with about 125 tech-start-ups across Africa having raised as much as $185.7 million in 2015, says the report, released by Disrupt Africa.
“2015 was an exciting year for African tech start-ups. Our data shows the increasing vibrancy of our ecosystem, with more quality tech start-ups, and more investor activity than ever before,” said Gabriella Mulligan, co-founder of Disrupt Africa.
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