Carwow raises £41.5m to upscale fast-growing Sell Your Car division

Carwow has raised $55 million (£41.5m) to scale its Sell Your Car division after the used car stocking platform delivered 600% revenue growth in just six months.

Formed with the online car buying and selling marketplace’s June acquisition of Wizzle, the expanding division is set to grow with the help of funding in the form of venture debt from Hercules Capital.

In a statement released this morning carwow said that it was already the number one third-party online seller of new cars – with over £4.2bn cars sold across the UK, Germany and Spain in 2021 – and the 900 vehicles listed each day on Sell Your Car also makes it the fastest-growing stock source for car retailers.

Carwow founder and chief executive, James Hind, said: “We’re incredibly pleased with how quickly our users and trade buyers have taken to Sell Your Car, proving the value of a unified, digital selling and buying experience.

“The size of our customer base and reach of our brand gives us a significant platform for growth advantage but this latest investment will help supercharge our service and experience on all fronts.

“In just three months, we hit our first target of 7,000 live listings and have helped sell £200m worth of cars in the first six months.

“All this has been achieved so rapidly by just leveraging what already exists within carwow; our huge reach via content, our great relationship with dealers and our in-house technology. We now plan to use part of the additional funding to advertise Sell Your Car to all car owners.

“With great results and learnings in the UK, we’ve begun testing in Germany. Ultimately our aims are global - just like the rest of the carwow business.”

Similar to sector rival Motorway, which achieved unicorn status with a £1 billion valuation earlier this month, Sell Your Car allows consumers listing their car by taking photos, and inviting dealers to bid and buy it directly from them, with all offers including collection.

Carwow said the platform’s six-fold growth came after the service was made available to its nine million existing UK users.

Now the business plans to invest in technology and platform development, international expansion and user growth.

It will also add over 150 roles in the Sell Your Car division over the next 12 months, adding to the existing team of 350.

Steve Kuo, partner at Hercules Capital said ““We are pleased to be providing this growth capital to carwow as they look to continue to rapidly scale their Sell Your Car division in Europe and further expand their addressable market.”

Hind added: “Whilst the focus of this investment is on Sell Your Car, our rapidly growing team also delivered a record year for our new car business.

“We’ve led the market on the switch to electric vehicles, with over 30% of sales now pure electric, and captured huge consumer demand for finding the best route for getting a new car and selling an old one.”