Regardless of hovering inflation and a crumbling native foreign money, automotive supplier Treasured Okoedion says no week goes by and not using a automotive sale at any certainly one of his three dealerships throughout Lagos State, Nigeria. Okoedion says many of those gross sales—over 30 since 2023—have been facilitated by way of the auto tech platform, Carbin Africa.
Launched in 2023 by two ex-Cars45 workers, Femi Oriowo and Fawaz Abdul, Carbin Africa is digitising automotive stock and gross sales processes for automotive retailers and dealerships in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest automotive market.
Earlier than becoming a member of Carbin Africa, Okoedion says he was only a “road dealer working with Cars45,” the place he first met and established a relationship with the Carbin Africa co-founders. Since becoming a member of the platform, all kinds of retailers, sellers and their stock have since opened as much as him.
“A consumer will stroll in right here and say, okay, he desires [a Lexus] RS350, I don’t have it. I can rapidly log into Carbin Africa and get what I need,” says Okoedion, within the Yaba outlet of his enterprise, Okopi Auto Restricted.
Beginnings
Oriowo’s path to founding Carbin Africa started when he was an OLX service provider serving as a intermediary between Laptop Village distributors and finish patrons. He recollects passing by a number of automotive dealerships to and from the favored pc {hardware} market on the Lagos mainland, and pondering that promoting vehicles on an internet market was not too far-fetched.
As soon as, buoyed by youthful braveness, he entered into one of many dealerships and requested the proprietor if he may listing the stock on OLX and earn a fee.
“I used to be actually assured in these days,” Oriowo says in his workplace within the coronary heart of Yaba, Lagos’ famed tech cluster. The supplier agreed to the association, offering him with images and specs of the stock.
Inside per week, he’d bought his first automotive, he stated.
In an entire transfer in direction of automotive gross sales, Oriowo joined Cars45 after it launched in 2016 and constructed a service provider community with classmates from the College of Lagos the place he was finding out to change into a geophysicist. He says they unfold out at Cars45’s 5 retail centres throughout Lagos and he arrange a company financial institution to course of their gross sales centrally.
Then they “began to promote vehicles aggressively,” he says, at the very least 25 per 30 days.
Finally, due to the traction they’d, Oriowo says he secured a 30-car month-to-month consignment deal from Cars45 administration on the time. The deal was contracted provided that he may discover a bodily lot for the consignment.
Collectively along with his crew, the dealership initially operated from Abdul’s grandmother’s yard earlier than Cars45 supplied to co-fund a correct automotive showroom. However earlier than enterprise may absolutely kick off there, COVID-19 lockdowns occurred, adopted carefully by administration adjustments at Cars45, summarily ending the settlement. Oriowo says they tailored by lowering stock with the capital they’d and partnering with sellers to promote their stock for commissions—₦50,000 per automotive.
“They (sellers) actually cherished it as a result of they solely needed to fear about shopping for the vehicles; they didn’t have to fret about promoting,” Oriowo says.
It was this collaboration with sellers mixed with earlier expertise working as retailers on Cars45 that exposed challenges and market gaps which finally led to Carbin’s founding, Oriowo says.
Distinctive promoting level
Carbin Africa is certainly one of a number of on-line platforms which have launched since 2010 to ease the shopping for and promoting of vehicles in Nigeria.
To purchase a automotive in Nigeria previous to 2010, you wanted to go to any of a number of small and medium sized dealerships, or discover listings in a newspaper, or attend a automotive public sale, or know somebody who had a automotive they had been trying to promote. Marketplaces like Cheki—whose Ugandan and Kenyan operation Cars45 acquired in 2021, OLX, and Jiji facilitated the transfer on-line connecting anybody who needed to purchase or promote a automotive. Later startups like Cars45—which launched in 2016 and was acquired by Jiji in 2021—launched, as its standout function, verification and inspection companies which had been sorely wanted in a low-trust market liable to fraud.
In Lagos, the automotive market depends closely on middlemen, based on Richard Odoboh, one such intermediary who has been utilizing Carbin Africa because it launched. These middlemen, or auto retailers as Carbin refers to them, know the place you could find a superb Nigerian-used Toyota Camry or who offers in good UK-used autos—used autos, valued at an estimated $1.24 billion, comprise about 90% of the automotive market in Nigeria. In the perfect case state of affairs, they know tips on how to confirm the authenticity of automotive autos or the place to keep away from shopping for a automotive.
Their operations although, like your neighborhood tuck outlets, are extremely fragmented. It’s unclear, as an illustration, what number of of such middlemen there are precisely in Lagos. Oriowo says there’s possible round 10,000 throughout the nation with a big proportion stationed more often than not in Lagos.
These middlemen or auto retailers are Carbin Africa’s prime goal prospects.
Oriowo argues that whereas finish customers would possibly make a purchase order, on common, as soon as each few years, a intermediary would possibly promote two or three vehicles per 30 days.
By bringing collectively automotive sellers—which Carbin Africa defines as established brick and mortar dealership with at the very least 5 vehicles of their stock and a devoted workers to interface with the startup—Carbin Africa makes out there to the them a big number of vehicles to commerce in.
“I get vehicles from Carbin after which purchasers from Jiji,” Odoboh says, including that he’s bought about 15-20 since becoming a member of the platform in 2023. He says he’s made as little as ₦50,000 and as excessive as ₦1 million in particular person commissions.
The platform can also be fixing for what Oriowo says stays a problem for middlemen or auto retailers who use current marketplaces: out of date listings and a type of “nesting doll” downside the place the identical automotive will be listed by as many as three or 4 retailers or middlemen making a prolonged provenance chain for finish patrons and complicating gross sales processes.
Thus far, Carbin Africa has onboarded a bit greater than 250 Lagos automotive dealerships, throughout eight zone or dealership clusters, and generated a present digital stock of about 1,700 vehicles—greater than 90% of that are foreign- and Nigerian-used autos. There are round 1,000 middlemen registered on the platform and round 400 of them have facilitated a sale through the platform in current months, Oriowo says.
He calls the platform the “largest real-time automotive stock in Lagos,” with an replace time of half-hour. A 2025 objective for the startup is to onboard at the very least 400 of the five hundred automotive dealerships (by Carbin’s definition) he says there are in Lagos to extend stock selection and quantity for middlemen. Then the corporate will look to increase its attain to different used automotive market sizzling spots in Nigeria: Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Kano, and Kaduna.
The startup may even be contemplating a West African enlargement down the street, he says.
Checks and balances
With transactions that run within the tens of millions in a low belief setting like Nigeria, Carbin Africa’s VP of Merchandise, Ogochukwu Nduka, says that there’s an abundance of warning to maintain all events protected with each transaction.
Sellers and retailers, earlier than they’re activated, should present info equivalent to a Nationwide Identification Quantity or enterprise registration paperwork from the Company Affairs Fee. Any certainly one of its 20 subject officers who’re assigned to dealership clusters additionally bodily confirm these identification supplies and ensure that dealerships are situated the place they are saying they’re. In facilitating gross sales between an finish person and a supplier, these officers additionally request and confirm copies of identification paperwork from the client.
As they scale and enhance digital verification, Oriowo says they’ll rely an increasing number of on creating good tech options and instruments on the separate auto service provider and supplier platforms.
Along with these on-line and offline verification processes, Nduka says gross sales are processed by way of Paystack making certain transactions are safe till remitted to verified financial institution accounts.
Funding
Thus far, the startup has raised $300,000 in pre-seed funding from early-stage enterprise capital agency, 54Collective. The agency says its funding stemmed not solely from the co-founders’ “deep business experience,” however their understanding of the market, in keeping with its founder-forward funding mannequin.
“At 54Collective, we’re extraordinarily bullish on the automotive worth chain throughout each East and West Africa. Our confidence extends to each core infrastructure and complementary options on this sector, which made this funding align properly with our strategic imaginative and prescient,” Yunus Ibrahim, Junior Enterprise Builder at 54 Collective stated in an e-mail.
As the corporate grows, the agency stays monitoring a number of development metrics, from the variety of auto retailers actively utilizing the platform and the expansion of its automotive stock, to activation and retention charges.
The enterprise agency is main a pre-seed extension spherical, based on Oriowo.
Ibrahim says the agency will proceed to help the startup “offered they keep sturdy efficiency towards our key metrics.”
Income mannequin
Along with receiving commissions on each transaction it facilitates, Carbin Africa, like different gamers within the sector, earns cash by offering companies equivalent to automotive doc verification to its auto retailers and sellers. This it does by way of a partnership with car verification service, LegitCars.
Whereas Okoedion says it’s a service he’s used for automotive gross sales facilitated by way of the platform, auto service provider Odoboh says it isn’t a service he’s conscious of or has used. He carries out automotive verifications the best way most middlemen do; by way of private contacts at customs and regulation enforcement.
Automotive financing is one other space it’s venturing into. It isn’t a brand new service for startups within the auto tech sector, however Oriowo says that Carbin’s financing product, Automotive Flex, targets middlemen who’re underserved within the present market. Retailers, he says, have area information. They know the place to seek out good offers, community, prospect and make gross sales. But, many are unable to develop past serving as middlemen for lack of capital.
“The one distinction between a freelancer (service provider) and a regular automotive dealership is simply cash,” Oriowo says.
The startup has been in dialog with credit score establishments and buyers for this financing product and Oriowo says there’s already dedication from three native and worldwide backers.
Oriowo says in 2024, the corporate crossed round ₦1 billion in Gross Merchandise Quantity—they’re declining to reveal gross revenue numbers. In 2025, the corporate plans to succeed in or surpass ₦5 billion with a ten% take price.
Ololade Shoyemi, Carbin Africa’s VP of Operations & Development, says it’s an audacious objective however the construction and partnerships to make it occur are already in place.
Carbin Africa has entered a sector with sturdy oblique opponents like Jiji (which now owns Cars45) despite its specialisation and distinctive choices. Maybe, extra immediately competing with the startup embrace Shekel Mobility, a YC-backed startup which launched in 2022 and provides financing in addition to operations administration to automotive sellers, which they might outline in another way than Carbin Africa.
Oriowo says he likes to consider previous and new startups within the sector as much less of opponents and extra of collaborators particularly given the scale of the automotive market. In truth, the extra gamers there are, the higher the result for various segments of the market that want the options they create, he argues. This 12 months, nevertheless, the one-year previous startup is taking pictures for the moon. Maybe, if their bold plans come to fruition, they may land on the celebrities as a substitute, he says.