No longer operating in stealth mode, Vancouver startup Autozen announced today that it has raised a $4.2 million funding round.
Positioned to disrupt the stressful and unnecessarily complex car sale process, Autozen is a new consumer-to-business (C2B) marketplace on a mission to create an easier, safer and more transparent way for car owners to sell their vehicles.
The car sale experience is often painstakingly complicated and slow, with unfair valuations, uncertain outcomes, and unpredictable encounters with strangers and sales people. Autozen’s platform tackles these issues head on and creates a new category in the industry with its unique marketplace model.
At the helm is Olivier Vincent, who brings 20 years of techpreneur experience in marketplace, mobile, and AI companies. With a career defined by a passion for identifying and solving deep pain points, Vincent has built a team that shares the same vision.
“One of the unique features of Autozen is the fact that dealers compete against one another to give the best offer. Currently when car owners trade-in their vehicles they only get an offer from a single dealer (i.e. no competition) which means they’re likely not receiving the best price possible,” Vincent told Techcouver.
Joining Vincent are Kalle Radage (former president of Payfirma) as COO, Xichi Zheng (former VP of Engineering at Recon Instruments) as CTO, and Kevin Bent (former executive at Postmedia Network) as Business Development Advisor.
“It’s baffling how selling a car in 2021 is as aggravating as it was 20 years ago. We’ve consistently heard from consumers that this industry has been stubbornly low tech for too long,” says Vincent. “With this initial investment, we’ve assembled a team with vast tech, product and go-to-market capabilities to address sellers’ frustrations and finally bring much-needed innovation to this industry.”
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
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