Naspers Ltd., an early investor in China’s Tencent and still its largest shareholder, is backing rent-to-buy car firm Planet42 in a $100 million debt and equity fund-raising.
The firm, founded in 2017, provides vehicle financing mostly to people who can’t access it from banks.“In South Africa, we want to put the pedal to the metal using this new financing to quickly add about 10,000 more cars to the fleet,” he said. “In Mexico we are exploring where best to find customers, and how to switch on dealerships, so it takes time to get the ball rolling, but we have started to test the market and have about 250 cars that side.
African startups raised a record $5.3 billion last year, according to data compiled by Briter Bridges, a market intelligence company. South Africa pulled a big portion of that, defying a deepening global slump in the technology industry. Co-founded by Oja and Marten Orgna, Planet42 uses algorithms and data points to asses a potential customer’s risk level and generate an offer to buy a car from a dealership of choice within minutes, said Oja. In South Africa, the firm has almost a thousand car dealerships in its network already, with about 40% of its sales coming directly from the dealerships, he said.
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