Yahoo Finance The man who wants to make driving easy
Tell me about Caura.
The digital landscape to manage all the different services that you need for your car is getting out of control. Consumers need more and more apps and digital services to manage parking, road tax, congestion charges and tolls in order to be compliant and fend off fines for late payment.
I had the idea for Caura shortly after leaving a company I founded - Echo Pharmacy - in which we created a slick app to help people manage their prescriptions. This was also a fractured industry that involved a lot of unnecessary admin, and Echo is now one of the UK’s fastest growing companies. I knew that my experience wrangling the NHS and the many public and private companies we worked with in Echo, I could do the same for car ownership.
My girlfriend and I had racked up hundreds of pounds in parking fines so I started looking into options. We needed to build a product that was on the side of the driver, and having also spent several years working at Apple, building an iOS app was the logical next step. I knew the 20+ apps and services could be centralised to make life easier for consumers and remove the hassle of car ownership.
What is the big picture here? Why do we need another app?
Caura is not just another app - it’s the only app drivers need.
Current systems are confusing and a large number of drivers get caught out and issued with a ticket even if they think they’ve done everything right. Now, there’s a beautiful app that makes it easy to keep track of - and renew - any car related admin or payment.
The way the systems are set up, consumers lose. You get a paper reminder that your insurance is lapsing but you get an automated ticket if you miss the deadline. Caura is designed to help consumers avoid these frustrating and expensive situations.
Our goal is to make car ownership hassle free. That includes parking, congestion charges, tolls, tax, and as of today, Insurance.
Why are you launching a car insurance product during lockdown? No one is driving!
Insurance is generally purchased through price comparison websites. However, this process is outdated, time consuming and can feel a bit disjointed. You answer 50 questions and then get sent to the insurer’s website to enter more personal information and complete the sale process. Then you get inundated with emails from lots of providers for a long time.
With Caura’s new product, we’ve redesigned that whole process, making it super quick, clean and simple. In 60 seconds, you can receive several quotes, select your favourite and be covered in just two taps.
Downturns are a good time to invest in product development - some of the biggest startups were founded during the ‘07 downturn - AirBnB, Uber, Mailchimp, Square, WhatsApp ... and tons more.
It’s all well and good to launch an app for your car but shouldn’t we all be getting rid of cars?
There’s a lot of anti-car rhetoric these days but lots of people are completely reliant on their vehicles, especially outside London, where public transport infrastructure is not as extensive.
We agree that where journeys can be done by foot, rideshare, bike and/or public transport, that should be the case. But sometimes you just need to get into a car.
We are big fans of reducing our carbon footprint and tackling climate change issues associated with private car use is high on our agenda!
Your first start-up was a digital pharmacy, how does this compare?
The challenge we’re trying to solve is the fragmented landscape for managing your car, which boils down to convenience, compliance, and safety. Our mission at Caura is largely similar to Echo’s in bringing people the things they need, in a way they want to consume it, faster and more simply than the existing process allows for.
The challenges we’ve encountered are the same - large incumbent organisations in a heavily regulated industry who move slowly and require you to do a lot of work to de-risk partnerships.
What about numbers? How many people are using this app? How big is the market for it?
We launched the app in September 2020 - we’re coming up to 10K users in less than two months. So far, the feedback has been great (hundreds of 5 star reviews on the App Store)
And the market is huge. There are 30 million drivers in the UK whose lives can be instantly made easier with Caura.
What’s next for Caura?
Once we are established and up and running in the UK, we want to take Caura to Europe and beyond. Caura has the potential to be a huge force for change in the automotive industry, especially with the emergence of new ownership/sharing models where people want to easily be able to use new cars more frequently in urban settings - where they are most likely to have to pay various charges (e.g. parking) and don’t want to get fines!
As every country has its own set of rules around car ownership, we are focusing on the UK for now.
How is this changing the way people live?
We are bringing three main benefits to drivers 1) CONVENIENCE - a couple of taps to make any payment for any car related service. 2) COMPLIANCE - always pay for the right thing at the right time. Never get a fine again and 3) ROAD SAFETY - MOTs are done on time to pick up on vehicle defects like broken lights, bald tyres, etc.
As this is your second startup, what lessons have you learned? What is your biggest regret?
I regret not going out on my own sooner. That said, my experience at Apple and Bain have been invaluable in my entrepreneurial journey.
My main lesson is to always start a business with the customer’s pain point and to build out from there.
How’s the company dealing with lockdown? Can you be productive working from home?
We’re a lean dynamic startup. We have a great team, and we moved to remote working two weeks before official lockdown. We are still in constant contact with each other on Slack, Figma, Miro, Trello, Jira etc and Zoom for daily standups, regular catch-ups and team meetings.
Times are uncertain, it’s a pretty crazy time to start a business. How do you unwind?
I just bought a house which I’m doing up. Painting can be surprisingly therapeutic.
