DMG Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of media group Daily Mail and General Trust, led a £100m ($117m) funding round for UK-based automotive e-commerce platform developer Cazoo yesterday.
The round included Eight Roads Ventures, a subsidiary of investment and financial services group Fidelity, as well as the Abu Dhabi state-owned Mubadala Capital, General Catalyst, Octopus Ventures, Stride.VC and CNP, part of financial holding company Groupe Frère-Bourgeois.
Cazoo operates an online dealership for used vehicles that are reconditioned by the company and delivered to the buyer. It offers a 90-day warranty, roadside assistance and a seven-day money-back guarantee for customers.
The company expects grow as the Covid-19 pandemic causes consumer purchases to be increasingly conducted online. It also said it is exploring partnerships to facilitate the transportation of essential goods through its fleet of car transporters during the lockdown.
Manuel Lopo de Carvalho, chief executive of DMG Ventures, said: “We are very excited to continue to support [founder and CEO Alex Chesterman] and the team at Cazoo.
“The pace of what they have achieved and the level of adoption they’ve seen in the first few months since launch is remarkable. With almost 8 million used car transactions a year in the UK, there is a clear opportunity to provide a more convenient way to buy a car and shift part of the market online.”
The company has now raised approximately $218m since it was founded in 2018. Its most recent funding had involved it securing $32.2m from General Catalyst, Mubadala Capital and unnamed additional investors in December 2019.
DMG Ventures, Stride.VC, Entrée Capital and Octopus Ventures provided $30.4m in funding for Cazoo in September 2019, after the same four investors had supplied $38.3m in seed capital in late 2018.
Image courtesy of Cazoo.
