Less than a month after raising $23 million in its Series A round, auto financing company Moove has launched its services in Cape Town, South Africa. Moove is a vehicle financing company with the aim of simplifying the process of owning vehicles and helping people who find it difficult to own vehicles to do so. Hinting at expansion plans, the company said, after its Series A round, that the acquired funds would increase its ability to give more people access to vehicle ownership, especially those who are unable to get access to vehicle financing.
Cape Town is officially the startup’s fourth location for expansion in less than two years of being operational. The country is operational in Africa’s biggest cities – Lagos, Accra and Johannesburg. Its Johannesburg expansion is an actualization of its desire to provide more services for Africans and builds on its Johannesburg operations. Moove was founded in 2019 by Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi and was birthed out of the founders’ desire to provide Africans with an opportunity to owning new vehicles and providing jobs at the same time. It was initially bootstrapped by founders Jide Odunsi and Ladi Delano after which it had its seed-stage funding from Future Africa.
Moove is more focused on businesses like Uber and people who require Vehicles for business purposes such as ride-hailing and e-logistics services. The company makes this provision through its alternative credit-scoring technology which grants it access to proprietary performance and revenue analytics of mobility entrepreneurs (Uber drivers for instance) to underwrite loans. After doing this, Moove grants loans to its users by selling them new vehicles and providing finance of up to 95 percent of the purchase within five days of the customer joining the platform. Customers are then given the options of paying back throughout 24, 36 or, 48 months, and instalments are calculated using a percentage of their weekly revenue.
Speaking about its Cape Town launch, the company’s CEO and co-founder Ladi Delano said that “with consistent 60% month-on-month growth since we launched in Lagos in mid-2020, I’m proud of our team for getting us to four markets in just 15 months”. Moove’s services are available through its mobile app.
Moove plans to “continue serving our customers to meet the evolving needs in urban mobility”. “Our vision for the future also includes a commitment to reduce our carbon footprint and to increase gender equality within the industry”, Chisom Anoke, the company’s Country Manager for Nigeria said earlier this month.
Moove is expected to expand to other cities in the continent as its plan is to leverage the fact that vehicle financing is still underdeveloped in Africa and to narrow this vehicle financing gap.
