Planet42 initially launched as CarGet in 2017 to service South Africa, a market well-known to co-founder and CFO Marten Orgna, who ran African Investments for Trigon Capital. The startup companions with dealerships throughout South Africa to supply entry to vehicles for private use to its largely underbanked clientele (9 out of 10 of shoppers).
“Having a personal vehicle is a necessity in South Africa, as public transport is underdeveloped while ride-hailing is prohibitively expensive for most,” says Eerik Oja, co-founder and CEO. “A household automobile generally is a lifesaver, however banks give attention to newer, costly automobiles and solely approve 15% of automobile financing candidates. This leaves few alternate options to lower- and middle-income households.”
Planet42 makes use of an automatic scoring algorithm to course of consumer functions primarily based on credit score bureau, affordability, and various knowledge. If the appliance is accepted, Planet42 analyses the shopper’s validation paperwork, reminiscent of IDs, payslips and bank statements earlier than buying the automobile from the dealership and renting it to the shopper. The asset is secured with monitoring know-how, in addition to complete and mechanical insurance coverage. Thus far practically 2,000 automobiles have been delivered to shoppers this fashion.
“We grew eight-fold in 2019 and we had our strongest month to date in April, despite the ongoing crisis. We see a huge need for people to improve their standards of living with better mobility, but a lack of options in the market to service them. More than 24 million people are credit impaired or have no access to finance in South Africa – that’s well over half of the adult population,” explains co-founder and CEO Oja, who gained expertise within the various car financing area as Nation Supervisor for Mogo Finance in Estonia.
Planet42 will use the funds raised to maintain increasing its portfolio of automobiles. The startup is concentrating on a complete of 100,000 vehicles by 2024 in South Africa alone. In addition to scaling there, the workforce is taking a look at worldwide enlargement throughout key rising markets, the place they are going to be providing bikes and different kinds of mobility, alongside vehicles.
“There are multiple markets in Latin America, Africa and South-East Asia with similar pain points – poor public transport, limited access to credit, and long commutes. Fintech has the potential to make a huge positive impact on how people get from A to B in these places, and we are proud to back Planet42 in making it a reality,” says Rait Ojasaar, Associate at Change Ventures, a enterprise capital agency specializing in founders from the Baltic states.
