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Zoopla founder accelerates towards £30m used car idea

Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman - who sold the portal company for more than £2.2 billion to US private equity fund Silver Lake - is moving into used cars.

He is to launch Cazoo, a car buying and rental website that will allow customers to buy, finance or rent a used car online and have it delivered it their door within 48 hours. He has already raised £30m in start-up funding.

While Rightmove and now OnTheMarket have always been largely about property listings, Chesterman has ensured Zoopla was a more diverse firm; as ZPG it owned websites Uswitch and Money as well as Primelocation.

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In 2003 Chesterman launched DVD rental company ScreenSelect, which later became Lovefilm and was bought by Amazon for £200m in 2011.

“I'm delighted to announce this investment in my latest venture, Cazoo, and am very excited by the opportunity to transform the used car buying experience, which suffers from poor satisfaction and convenience and is failing to meet the needs of consumers” says Chesterman.

"Buying a car should be no different to buying any other product online today."

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    Third time is a C(h)ar(m)?

    Not sure - used car market is terrible given the finance options for new cars

    Cannot see how a large margin can be made on this one Alex.....

  • Mike Riley

    I reckon, Alex likes to play "Boyzone" to market leaders "Take That"....

    This is a play against webuyanycar.... he will do the same as he has with Zoopla....

    Go into an industry with a very strong and proven business model, put a spin on what they are doing, so the investors that missed out can invest with his new idea.... build it up and float it.

    My money is he will make it work and find a revenue stream that isn't necessarily obvious. It could easily also be a play on the car insurance market..... its an inexpensive way of generating lots of leads for car insurance.

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