Auto parts buyers require specific parts to fit specific vehicles, creating a supply-constrained environment.based in new zealand partially We hope to alleviate these limitations by connecting parts buyers around the world with the right parts.
The two-year-old startup is not in the auto parts market. Instead, Partly powers marketplaces like eBay and Shopify, with a database of over 50 million parts from over 20,000 suppliers and OEMs.
“The way the technology works in principle is we work with suppliers to ingest, structure and standardize all the data,” co-founder and CEO Levi Fawcett told TechCrunch.
The company then manages that data and pushes it back to the larger platforms buyers are already using to find auto parts.
The startup closed a $21 million Series A on Monday to continue its growth in Europe, where most of its customer base is located — in addition to marketplaces like eBay, Partly also has partnerships with the United Nations and several unnamed fortunes. Fortune 500 companies. The startup also intends to use the funding to scale more aggressively in the U.S., where it is aggressively hiring and building offices. Most importantly, the funding will help Partly double down on its engineering team to solve the core problem of aggregating all the right parts for a vehicle based solely on the license plate.
“It sounds simple, but it’s a very hard problem,” Fawcett said, noting that Partly’s 50-person team should grow to more than 100 employees by the end of next year.
As well as expanding its business, Partly’s second goal is to represent New Zealand on the world stage. With top customers and no direct competitors, the start-up aims to become New Zealand’s largest tech company within five years. To do that, it has to compete with Xero, which is publicly traded on the Australian Stock Exchange and has a market capitalization of about $7.4 billion, according to Google Finance.
Fawcett, who previously managed and developed hardware simulations at Rocket Lab, said the opportunity to connect part buyers with the right part is “enormous.”In the U.S. alone, consumers spend close to $95.4 billion The auto parts market will reach the global auto parts market size by 2021 $2.5 trillion by 2024.
“About 98% of parts ordered today are done over the phone by a parts translator, and their job is to answer the phone, understand what they’re looking for, find it in the system, figure out what vehicle it’s from, determine if there are any discrepancies, Or is it modified when it comes from another country, and then the buyer is given the correct part,” Fawcett said. “It’s the whole process we’re flipping. Instead, you put in your license plate, and you pick the part you want. It basically takes a super old process and turns it on its head by removing the humans.”
This problem has not been solved at scale before because it requires collaboration across automakers, aftermarket parts makers, and retailers, and establishing a common language so that all information is consistent across manufacturers. Not only does this make it easier for buyers, it also makes it easier for sellers who want to get to know their customers better.
“In the case of the United Nations, we power the World Food Program, which has one of the largest fleets in the world,” Fawcett said. “They have a huge network where their garages need to buy parts, and they need to centralize the data to understand things like volume discounts, the right parts for all the vehicles. We power the system to connect buyers and sellers, but we do B2B.”
Some thought following the B2B model would be the recipe it needed to scale, and the startup has apparently convinced investors of its growth potential.
Rob Coneybeer, managing director and co-founder of Shasta Ventures, one of the participating investors in the round, told TechCrunch that VCs are attracted to “the huge market of compelling founders who solve important consumer problems.”
“One of the biggest opportunities in the world is the broken $500B aftermarket auto parts market,” Coneybeer said. “Levi and his team developed a solution that makes it easier and faster to find the right part, resulting in higher conversions to market, lower returns and happier customers. Their solution is based on years of hard engineering work, Allowing them to scale rapidly from today’s $150 million in annual orders to billions of dollars.”
Partly’s Series A round was led by Octopus Ventures. In addition to Shasta, participating investors include Square Peg, Blackbird, Ten13, Square co-founder Randy Redigg, Hillfarrance, and I2BF. Existing investors including Figma CEO Dylan Field, Notion co-founder Akshay Kothari, and Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck also participated.
