Kalon Venture Backs South African Auto-tech Startup Carscan In Follow-on Funding Worth $1m
Carscan, a South African augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, has raised $1 million (R15.4 million) in follow-on funding to help it scale and expand its operations.
Venture capital firms Kalon Venture Partners and Launch Africa, as well as entrepreneurial financing institution IDF Capital, as well as Allan Gray, E2 Ventures, and AlphaCode, a fintech start-up incubator, led the fresh round.
“Carscan assists the consumer and makes the entire claims process simple and frictionless,” says co-founder Chander Prakash. “The company is working with a number of local and international clients, and [the technology] has been developed in conjunction with one of the largest players in the automotive sector in South Africa.”
The company just received a funding injection from some of its existing investors, and it plans to scale its technology both locally and internationally.
Why The Investors Invested
“The Carscan team have shown exceptional talent and have shown their offering is solving a large problem across the insurance and automotive industries. This follow-on round is testimony to the growth of the company. Carscan’s team delivers a solution solving a large problem across industries. The solution will disrupt the motor industry and make lives easier for numerous stakeholders in the automobile and insurance value chains,” Kalon Venture Partners CEO Clive Butkow said.
“We’re very proud of this being our first investment through our newly-established fund. Carscan is a great fit for our broader group and the founding team has shown exceptional aptitude in executing on this solution. We look forward to seeing them grow this solution across various markets,” Abu Cassim, AlphaCode fund executive, said.
A Look At What The Startup Does
Founded in 2019, Carscan is an augmented reality (AR) mobile app with artificial intelligence (AI) that provides an immersive experience for creating an accurate and traceable digital record of a vehicle. By capturing a snapshot of the vehicle part and scanning it, the software assists users in detecting and analyzing vehicle exterior, wheel, and glass damage, as well as extracting vehicle data.
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It enables anyone to examine and extract facts about an automobile in under a minute, speeding up the insurance claim process and removing all of the frustration and time waste that is typically associated with it.
This means that businesses in the automotive ecosystem may purchase, sell, rent, service, insure, finance, and auction cars with confidence, reducing fraud and other hazards in the industry.
Obins Choudhary and Chander Prakash, the founders of Carscan, claim to have discovered a vacuum in the automobile industry that has yet to be filled.
Although the Carscan technology has a variety of additional applications, it is now focused on automotive inspection and insurance.
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Carscan has gained traction with South African, Nigerian, and Indian consumers, according to the founders, and has recently completed successful proof-of-concepts in various Gulf countries.
Carscan tech Carscan tech
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer