Nigeria’s Used Car startup, Cars45, raises $5million in Series A funding

Nigerian auto startup, Cars45, has raised a $5 million Series A round from the Frontier Cars Group, a holding company whose backers include Balderton Capital,  EchoVC, TPG Growth, and NEA.

The company intends to use the capital to improve its platform that buys, sells, prices, and rates the condition of pre-owned autos.

According to Cars45 CEO Etop Ikpe, “The used-car market in Nigeria is generally a big hassle. There’s so much mistrust, no vehicle history, and not much of a structured dealer network. We’ve created something that changes all that, offering transparency, speed, convenience, and safety, in a highly frictional and opaque market.”

Former DealDey CEO Ikpe co-founded Cars45 in 2016 with Iyamu Mohammed, Sujay Tyle, and Peter Lindholm. The team’s background spans startup experience in Africa, Europe, and Silicon Valley. Iyamu Mohammed was previously the head of operations at African used car site Carmudi (now JumiaCar) while Sujay Tyle was a COO at Hired.com and Lindholm did stints at mobile operator Millicom and Swedish fashion site Nelly.com.

Though Ikpe would not disclose Cars45 value, volume, or revenue statistics, he said the venture has been actively buying and selling cars since launching, evidenced by customer Instagram shots.

He adds that he sees the company going beyond Nigeria. In his own words,  “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.”  “That’s still long down the line, but once the right time comes we’ll definitely go for it.”