Carmoola boss wants app to be 'everything' for motorists

AIDAN RUSHBY is an archetypal entrepreneur. "My mind is restless, I scribble down 20 or more business ideas spontaneously each week," he says.

- Lucy Tobin

"When there's an idea that I keep coming back to, or start exploring in more detail, I know that there's some potential." Oh, and he spends any spare time reading IPO prospectuses and annual reports: "I enjoy it," he laughs. "You can get so many nuggets of knowledge from them." A few years ago, Rushby, 38, pored over the business models of Cazoo, Alex Chesterman's beleaguered online car retailer, and Carvana, the US version that inspired Cazoo. 

"They addressed a significant market, used cars, but I wasn't convinced of their profit potential. However, I'd also been interested in the buy-now-pay-later concept popularised by Klarna, and thought there was an opportunity to combine the two." That's what he has done with Carmoola, an online car finance service where users can set a budget, arrange a loan and access immediate funds via its app. After a dozen or so questions, the site shows how much can be borrowed. It claims to cut out the commission and broker fees charged by most finance providers at used car dealerships. "Car dealerships usually take 10 to 15% commission on the loans, and have 1000-plus people working on their teams [adding to costs]." Carmoola's average APR is about 15%; since it went live in 2022, it's processed two million loan applications, funding the purchase of £50 million of cars.