Welcome to Mob76 Outlook and its readers, Geoff. Can you tell us a bit more about CarCloud?

Thanks for having me. We’re based in the UK but we’re addressing a problem that impacts and affects a global audience.

We are using technology and content to flip car ownership from legacy (sales commission-driven) distribution to customer-led informed and confident decision-making. 

We are disrupting an industry that has needed to be updated for a long time and solving a problem that impacts a global audience.

Our current Seedrs raise is 115% subscribed and we’re confident we can add to that substantially before the deadline later next month.

Can you go into a bit more detail?

There are three compelling external factors that make owning a car financially onerous.  Firstly, average UK car ownership costs £482 per month, and while money can be switched from mortgages to energy and broadband, this huge monthly cost is resolutely sticky.

Secondly, the insane price of insurance. It is up 58% year on year and is still rising. For most, the increases make no sense at all versus their record, risk profile and driving behaviour.

Finally there is the disgrace of car finance mis-selling – historic commission gouging and PCP intervention with the Lloyds Banking Group making a £450 million provision for compensation.

How are you righting these three terrible wrongs?

CarCloud’s mission is to deliver the lowest possible monthly car costs to the world’s car drivers. Our customers tell us that every time they engage with car ownership services providers, it feels like they are taking a pen knife to a gunfight. 

The odds are stacked against them and they understand that short-term commission trumps their longer term needs, for a key (and increasingly expensive) part of their lives.

Owning a car is becoming increasingly complex, because it’s a revenue magnet. Rather than addressing car ownership as an interconnected whole, drivers get sliced into multiple revenue streams.

For most, car ownership is all over the place – a V5 in a drawer, insurance documents in a glove box, another box file full of paper receipts, searching emails to work out who it’s insured with and so on.

CarCloud solves the problem by putting car in one (digital) space and using our industry insider insights to save customers time and money. We combine vehicle, driver and behavioural data with industry insider insight, to deliver an intuitive ‘in one place’ solution.

What’s the business model?

CarCloud provides web and app car ownership services via a freemium model. We give users peace of mind, ensuring they never miss a key date (7.1 million drivers missed their MOT in 2023 by an average of 3 weeks).

We combine car, driver and behavioural data to eliminate the need to fill overlapping forms and getting rid of the frustration of being forgotten beyond the point of sale.

Now walk me through the user experience

• • Enter registration
  • Complete account (form or social sign-in)
  • You have access to your ‘garage’ and you never miss a key ‘stay legal’ date
  • Add up to three cars for free
  • CarCloud MultiCar subscription (£4.99 pcm) 
  • CarCloud pre-populates car and driver data to take time and hassle out of buying the stuff you have to have to run your car
  • Access 160 insurers via our partnership with MoneySuperMarket
  • Understand your vehicle equity position with the UK’s first consumer vehicle equity calculator

• Challenge your finance deal – refinance to stay in the same car for less or optimise finance on your next through CarCloud’s bespoke Experian automotive finance panel

• Manage multiple family and company vehicles at home and on the go

How does CarCloud stand out from its competitors?

We have signed up more than 100,000 vehicles in 10 months, B2B Partnerships – Experian, MoneySuperMarket, Reach Media, BNP Paribas and we are addressing a market for 1-15 year old UK cars, that’s 25 million cars with a £12 billion annual spend. We’ve also just signed our first European market NDA that will be announced shortly

How much funding do you have in total?

We have raised £1.8 million and a recent second Seedrs crowdfund raised 100% in less than three days. We’re targeting a 2025 institutional round circa £2.2 million

How did you end up at this place and where do you expect to take it?

I have 30 years’s car manufacturer experience, starting at Vauxhall and ending up as CEO of Porsche GB Ireland. In those 30 years, despite the consumer tech revolution, the car industry model is stuck in a historic legacy commission driven model that creates customer dissatisfaction and ongoing frustration.

Our highly experienced team shares a driving passion to sort it out, not by transferring the car industry, but by transforming the way customers access it. We are driven by making ‘the better way car’ an accessible reality. And we’re going to make it happen.

Thanks, Geoff, if you can bring down my insane insurance rate, then you will have done me the greatest favour. Thanks for coming in.

My pleasure, thanks for having me.

Monty (714 Posts)

Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.