The company
ClickMechanic, the Venture Catalyst Challenge’s first ever winner in 2013, is an online marketplace for car mechanics, helping bring trust, transparency and convenience to the automotive repair industry through transformative technology and amazing customer care.
ClickMechanic was founded in 2012 as a simple solution to getting an honest, trustworthy and transparent mechanic for your car. While running a previous car parts aggregator business I found there was a problem with many customers not trusting their mechanics. After further investigation and a chat with my brother, who worked as a mechanic, I realised there was just no easy way to book a trusted mechanic so I decided make this problem the topic of my Masters thesis.
The team
Felix and I met at Entrepreneur First. We had both identified the same problem customers faced in finding trustworthy mechanics, so we decided to team up and develop ClickMechanic with the goal of building the easiest and most transparent way for car owners to book top mechanics.
Enterprise Lab support
In 2013, we entered Imperial’s first Venture Catalyst Challenge competition. After going through the six-week programme of masterclasses, one-to-one business coaching and pitch training, ClickMechanic won £30,00 in the form of office space, continued business coaching and mentoring.
Now ClickMechanic have 30 investors and have raised £2 million. The most notable investors include Forward Partners, 500 Start Ups and the former CEO of JustEat. We are currently scaling up. Our vision is to be the largest online market place for automotive repairs in Europe.
Successes and setbacks
Our biggest successes have been growing to the stage we are currently at, building a product our customers love – our Net Promotor Score is +80! – and surviving and thriving.
The biggest challenges have been investment deals falling through, almost running out of money and not getting an office dog yet!
