THERE are more than 50 million different vehicle leasing deals available in the UK and finding one that suits you could prove an absolute minefield.
Unlike mobile phones, utilities, insurance and most other significant purchases, there is no way for someone to search and compare deals in the sector, which currently has around 261,000 vehicles on contracts.
Now a Glasgow-based start-up is aiming to change that with the country’s first vehicle leasing comparison site, Lease Fetcher (www.leasefetcher.co.uk). And the company has secured £300,000 in a seed founding round led by its parent company Digital Impact.
Scotland’s main economic development agency Scottish Enterprise is investing up to £100,000 with the digital agency making up the remainder.
Lease Fetcher was founded earlier this year in Glasgow and is planning to launch officially later in the year.
The new investment will enable the team to accelerate development of their comparison engine and digital systems, as well as help with the UK launch.
The system will automatically collect and store tens of millions of vehicle deals from hundreds of leasing brokers and will allow users to search, filter and compare the different prices to find the offer that’s best for them.
Founder and chief executive officer Will Craig said he has big plans for Lease Fetcher.
“In the UK, you can compare hundreds of electricity and gas packages, thousands of broadband deals and millions of phone contracts,” he said.
“Currently, users must find a car they like then use individual leasing broker websites to search for deals. If they cannot find a deal at a price they like, they must start this process over. The fact you can’t compare leasing deals is utterly mind boggling. With Lease Fetcher, we set out to change that.
“Moving forward, we’re tremendously excited to be working with Scottish Enterprise and plan to grow Lease Fetcher into a global market leader.”
The funding will immediately create three highly-skilled jobs within Lease Fetcher to help improve and optimise its service, but Craig said such teams grow quickly.
“As we recruit more leasing brokers, our onboarding and support teams will grow,” he said. “As more customers start using the service, our customer service team will grow.
“As we expand the remit of Lease Fetcher, our development team will grow. As our marketing ambitions expand, our content marketing team will grow. Within the next 12 to 18 months, we’re preparing to recruit another 10 employees across multiple departments. That’s a pretty conservative estimate too.
“If Lease Fetcher takes off, we could have to recruit two or three times that. In the long-term, who knows how large we can grow? CarWow has a 100-person strong team and I see no reason why we won’t need to grow to that size too.”
Craig also praised the team at Scottish Enterprise, for taking an interests when the company was simply an idea and a two-page business overview: “Over the past few months, the folk at SE and Business Gateway have helped us expand that overview into a viable business plan and, most importantly, put an offer of financial support in place.
“Without their support, we definitely wouldn’t be where we are today. ”
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