Seattle based Joydrive raises fund, expands its services across 14 states
E-commerce companies are making buying and selling of goods easier for customers. All thanks to internet and e-commerce companies. E-commerce companies offer different services such as booking hotel, tickets, ordering food, and many others but now Joydrive a startup firm allows customers to buy a car online. Buyers can view numerous cars used and unused on the Joydrive platform. The company is taking this trend to the next level and raising more funds so as to expand its online vehicle marketplace across the United States.
Joydrive, headquartered at Seattle, started the firm with only 15 members, 500 cars and only one dealer list on its marketplace. The company was established in 2017 and within two years managed to attract more people and dealers.
The company started to grown its business in 2018 and managed to get 3,000 cars. Its online marketplace nearly consists of 30,000 plus vehicles. It also added 150 dealers to its marketplace. These dealers use Joydrive to sell numerous cars online.
The Joyrdrive objective is to allow customers to buy used and new cars from various dealers and provide quick home delivery to its customers throughout the state. Currently, Joydrive had grown its online service to 14 states from 2 states a year ago. In 2018, Joydrive initially had 3,000 cars and managed to scale high in 2019.
In the previous week, Joyride added a new feature and launched it for the customers of Puget Sound region. More than 100 people from this region have started to sell their cars using this new feature of Joyride. The company is working very fast so as to ensure it can process the services and the requests and also collect the used cars.
Nearly 15 employees of Joydrive are currently working in Washington State. Further the CEO of Joydrive, Hunter Gorham, said the company has recruited more employees and managed to increase its office space by two-fold in order to make space for new candidates.
Since 2016, the company has successfully raised $10 million from car dealerships, and in 2019, it raised around $5.7 million.
Hunter Gorham said, “These strategic dealers are industry influencers uniting together to lead the change in auto sales.”
Joy drives allow customers to shop from the comfort of their place and prevents customers from a stressful experience. Simultaneously, Joydrive’s marketplace offers options from different dealers.
CEO says Joydrive needs very less capital amount because it doesn’t hold the inventory.
CEO stated, “A critical element of our model is that just like Uber and Airbnb- they don’t own the cars, they don’t own the homes- our models are very asset-light because we are leveraging inventory and infrastructure from our partners.”
Various startup firms such as Tred, Vroom, Carvana, and Shift have apparently earned revenue of worth $135 in 2018 and currently developing online dealerships similar to Joydrive. Tesla, the leading car manufacturer, directly sells their cars to customers, and Mercedes and BMW both are offering a subscription option.
Amazon, the leading e-commerce company, has partnered with car manufacturer Hyundai and Fiat Chrysler for online purchase and test drives. Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos informed, he is delighted to know about the technological changes taking place within the auto industry.
The model of Joydrive is somewhat similar to Airbnb and Uber. Joydrive named itself as the biggest online marketplace for used and new cars in the US. The company doesn’t charge customers with any fee; they can freely use the financing and trading services across the platform. The company makes revenue by collecting monthly subscription charges from dealerships.