News

October 1, 2020

Used car website Cazoo raises again: this time, £240m

The British unicorn is now worth more than $2bn.


Amy Lewin

1 min read

Alex Chesterman, Founder of Cazoo Ltd

Used car website Cazoo, founded by serial entrepreneur Alex Chesterman (founder of property site Zoopla), has raised £240m.

This is the British startup's fourth round of funding in just two years, and brings total funds raised to £450m. In June, the startup became the UK's 'fastest-ever' unicorn, hitting a billion-dollar valuation.

Now, Cazoo says, its valuation is "more than double" that — and above £2bn.

With this round, General Catalyst, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity and Blackrock join its pool of investors, which includes Mubadala Capital, DMG Ventures and Octopus Ventures.

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What's getting investors so excited?

Cazoo is taking on an enormous — and complicated — market.

It buys and reconditions used cars, sells them solely online and delivers them to customers' homes anywhere in the UK (sometimes in just 72 hours).

In its first 10 months of trading, the company says, it has achieved revenues of £100m.  It is selling and delivering thousands of cars every month all over the country.

Covid took its toll on the company back in April, when car auctions and suppliers closed down briefly — but now Chesterman is hoping to ride the online shopping wave.

“[The used car market] is the single largest retail market in the UK — bigger than food in value, at over £50bn per year,” he told Sifted in June.

And if consumers can swap a weekly trip to the supermarket for a weekly grocery shop online, he's confident they can also swap traipsing around used car dealerships for browsing used cars on their laptops.

Investors seem to agree.

Amy Lewin

Amy Lewin is Sifted’s editor and cohost of Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast , and writes Up Round, a weekly newsletter on VC. Follow her on X and LinkedIn