heycar

heycar is the fastest-growing platform for quality used cars in the European automotive industry and offers customers a user-friendly and trustworthy online platform for quality used cars of all well-known brands. There are no private sellers, and all cars are no older than 8 years, with no more than 100,000 miles (150,000 kilometers).

Manufacturer-approved used car standards, plus a warranty, offer further peace of mind for consumers, and financing offerings from partners are deeply integrated into the service. heycar’s fast-paced, highly ambitious and entrepreneurial culture provides its partners and investors a unique strategic advantage. The company goal is to revolutionize the way people buy and experience cars by being data-driven and putting customers at the center of everything it does.

Headquartered in Berlin, the heycar Group (Mobility Trader Holding GmbH) bundles all heycar national companies under one roof with stakeholders like Volkswagen Financial, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Allianz, and Renault. The active markets are Germany, UK, Spain, France, and an e-commerce pilot in the Netherlands with an ambition to rapidly expand into new markets. The heycar Group was founded in July 2019 and is responsible for the development of heycar’s European platform approach. The heycar Group is headed up by Florian Schlieper as CEO and Oscar Bülow is CFO.

The Opportunity

BCG Digital Ventures and Volkswagen Financial Services (VWFS) sought to build an online used car marketplace that would access existing and new customer segments, generate deep market insights, and lay the foundation for expansion into new mobility services.

The service needed to address numerous pain points for both buyer and dealer. Customers were bombarded with advertisements, overwhelmed with options, and intimidated by haggling. They didn’t know who to trust and couldn’t be sure the car they were buying was dependable or even safe. At the same time, dealers were hit with large and continuously rising fees for listing used cars online, squeezing their margins without any guarantee of leads or sales.