Car Throttle snags $1.6 mln seed

London-based Car Throttle, an online car community, has closed $1.6 million in seed funding. Redalpine led the round with participation from other investors that included Passion Capital.

PRESS RELEASE

London (PRWEB UK) 19 January 2015

Car Throttle, one of the internet’s largest car communities, has raised $1.6 million in a seed funding round led by Redalpine, alongside Passion Capital and Facebook’s first international employee Blake Chandlee.

This follows an earlier fundraising round of $550,000 in August 2013, which was led by Passion Capital (EyeEm, GoCardless, Duedil) and included James Bromley (MD, MailOnline) and Peter Read (Partner, Google Ventures).

The round, led by Swiss-based Redalpine, will help Car Throttle to continue building their innovative media platform which currently serves four million unique visitors per month. Adnan Ebrahim, the 24-year-old founder and CEO of Car Throttle, said: “This latest funding round allows us to continue building what we believe is the future of publishing; focusing on niches, like automotive, and growing rock-solid communities with the right balance of editorial content and user-generated posts.”

Peter Niederhauser, Partner at Redalpine, said: “We were impressed by how Adnan and his team have managed to grow a highly engaged community of car fans around the world. We are excited to lead this round as we see tremendous potential in Car Throttle’s new media approach.”

Blake Chandlee, Facebook’s VP of Global Partnerships and first international employee, said: “There is huge growth right now in vertical communities, particularly in building the technology which powers user-generated content around tight niches. Car Throttle has identified a community of petrolheads who are currently underserved by existing broader platforms.”

Car Throttle was founded in 2008 by Adnan while he was a first year Economics student at University College London. From his University bedroom he managed to grow an enthusiast blog and generate revenues from advertising before deciding to pursue the business full-time after graduating. The platform is now one of the largest destinations for car fans globally and is run by a young team of eight people.

The brand has managed to build highly popular social profiles, particularly on Facebook where it has over 2.5 million fans, and on YouTube where it produces weekly videos – including car reviews, comedy and trivia – for over 300,000 loyal subscribers.

Car Throttle currently receives thousands of contributions per day from its users. With over 60 per cent of its traffic from mobile devices, they are now hiring full-stack and front-end engineers, as well as iOS and Android developers looking to help them launch new apps on mobile and take advantage of the mobile consumption trend.