The founder of an AI car valuation start-up has outlined his plans for global growth following a 拢1.5 million crowdfunding round.
Tom Wood is CEO of Cazana, which uses machine learning and聽artificial intelligence聽to analyse the cost of vehicles and has聽more than one million monthly visitors to its platform.
London-based Cazana has raised nearly 拢1.5m on Crowdcube in a round which ended yesterday and聽included big US investors in the vehicle finance market. It beat its target by almost half a million pounds.
The latest funding round is the company鈥檚 third, having secured more than $4m to date.
“The two main areas we are spending the money聽on are聽scaling the commercial operation in the UK, growing the sales team to sign up more dealers and insurers, and also getting into the US market faster,鈥� Wood told 老九品茶Cloud.
鈥淲e’ll be in the US within the year, by Q1 2020. Our mission is to become the global valuation provider, and providing vehicle valuation insight in every market.
鈥淲e’ve got one US market advisor, Ed Robinson, who lives in Jersey and was the CEO at BMW Financial Services in the US market. He’s a very well-connected guy for when we launch there.
鈥淢ost of the investors want to have a meeting with us first, so we know a lot of the people that are聽putting in.鈥�
Wood, who founded Cazana in his garage in 2015,聽said half of聽the Cazana team are already preparing to go live in the States.
He explained that the US vehicle market is ten times the size of its UK counterpart, making it an obvious move. But the company is also planning wider expansion.
鈥淪ome of the really exciting markets which we’re going into shortly afterwards are the South East Asian Markets. There’s no valuation player in the market in China, so it’s a blank canvas for us to go in and be that provider which is really exciting,鈥� he said.
Cazana鈥檚 unique offering is the ability to both detect and predict vehicle prices instantly. Wood聽said that as electric and self-driving vehicles enter the market, and with聽evolving environmental and safety regulations, faster valuations powered by machine learning have become a necessity.
鈥淟ondon’s low emission zone is already active within the central congestion charging ring, but as of later this year, it’s going to expand to the greater London area,鈥� explained Wood.
鈥淵ou won’t be able to drive a car that has the old Euro emission standard anywhere within the M25 without paying a significant charge.
鈥淭hese regulations are popping up all over the world. These types of things have a very local effect on car prices which don’t meet those regulations.
鈥淭o pick up localised pricing changes like that, you need a real-time view.鈥�