The funding round was led by Shift4Good to support the company's growth and recent acquisition of Cylantro.
"We’re excited to welcome onboard the Cylantro team to Laka. Thomas and his team have built up a fantastic offering in France, and we can’t wait to ramp up our presence across the country. E-bikes are expected to outgrow car sales by 2025 in Europe and we see huge potential in France, where the sales of bikes and e-bikes are growing at double-digits. We are also excited to welcome Shift4Good as an investor, and we look forward to working with them to expand our commitments to decarbonising mobility, by making it easier for consumers to insure and protect their bikes or e-bikes."
The financing round was led by Autotech Ventures with participation from several new and existing investors.
"Autotech Ventures is truly excited to partner with the Laka team. As a transportation focused fund, we’ve been witnessing the explosive growth in personal ownership of two wheelers – especially in light of the pandemic – as well as increased business use cases within logistics."
The financing round was backed by InMotion Ventures, Porsche Ventures, and Autotech Ventures.
"Our main competitors are the large BNPL providers such as Klarna and credit cards. We are interest free and with short payment terms, customers are debt free quickly but risk long term debt with credit cards."
The Series C round was co-led by Target Global, RTP Global, and Autotech Ventures, bringing the company's total funding to £27.5m.
"The car market is one of the last retail categories that has yet to shift online, with online penetration of car sales being still below 1%, while 20% of all UK retail sales are now online. Drover’s digital ‘car-as-a-service’ model is the right approach to truly build the ‘Amazon of Cars’ as it lends itself much better to an online model than does the long-term commitment, high ticket size type transaction of buying a car with cash or on finance. As a result, the last few years have seen Drover evolve and grow into a seriouscontender in the UK car retailing market. The Drover team has been agile through COVID-19 and that has enabled us to continue to show fantastic growth in a challenging time. The need for a simpler, more flexible model for car ownership is only accelerating and we’re proud to be leading that journey in the UK and France and in hopefully many more markets in the future."
