Our Fund I portfolio company, Fixico has raised €7 million to grow its international footprint and fleet and insurance partnerships. The Dutch technology company offers a digital platform that seamlessly handles car repair for consumers, insurers, and fleet owners, providing them full control at every step in the repair process.
What about investors?
The €7M funding round was led by Autotech Ventures, an early backer of Nasdaq Stock listed Lyft (LYFT), a top competitor of Uber, and other successful startups like Frontier Car Group and Outdoorsy. Autotech Ventures’ Managing Partner Alexei Andreev joins Fixico’s Supervisory Board.
International expansion plans
Fixico is currently active in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and South Africa, working with more than 2,000 repair shops in total. Further, Fixico made its first decisive steps in the international business-to-business market in 2018 and now is poised to rapidly scale up further across Europe. Now the company is planning to expand across Europe; they’re eyeing Spain, UK, and France. However, no plans for the US yet.
Autotech’s (et al) fresh capital and its global network of transportation corporate partners will be employed to accelerate this growth and strengthen Fixico’s B2B solutions.
Fully digitised way to handle car damage repair
“In the car damage repair space, it seems as if time has stood still. The driver’s customer journey is still inconvenient and time-consuming. It involves numerous calls, emails, physical inspections, and so on. Yet today’s consumer expects a seamless experience, via a few simple clicks, like booking a taxi or a hotel,” said Derk Roodhuyzen de Vries, CEO of Fixico. “With Fixico, we offer an innovative and fully digital way to handle car damage repairs. Fleet and insurance partners use our platform as an intelligent repair tendering/ steering mechanism, to lower costs and cycle times and gain real-time insights.”
Fixico has seen an impressive uptake in fleet and insurance partners, and among many others, international players as AXA and AON are already using the platform to offer a fully-digital damage handling proposition to their customers.
“With Autotech Ventures, we have a unique partner on board that will empower us to become a top European player in the digital damage repair space,” said Derk Roodhuyzen. “It’s a great acknowledgement for the team that such a global industry expert is backing us. Their unparalleled network and deep knowledge of the mobility industry creates the perfect conditions for us to scale up fast. We are looking forward to working closely together, as this marks a clear milestone and propels us into a completely new phase in our company’s story”.
“We’re continuously looking for promising companies in the mobility sector globally, and believe that the model across the value chain that Fixico is building has the potential to change a multi-billion market. The team is outstanding and we are looking forward to supporting Fixico’s international expansion and building a global category winner,” said Alexei Andreev, Managing Partner at Autotech Ventures.