OkayKer, a startup with an end-to-end platform connecting car owners and maintenance workshops, has raised $700,000 in seed funding, the company said in a statement.
With this funding, the company said it plans to expand its operations in Pakistan as it looks to create the first automotive emergency service in the country.
Founded by Nashit Iqbal, Hasnain Akber, Asjad Amin and Anusha Shahid, the startup is backed by multiple institutional investors including Orbit Startups, Cur8 Capital (UK based), FRIM Venture (family office) and Sabr Capital along with several local and international angel investors.
The founding team has strong experience in building and scaling startups, including Careem, Daraz and FindMyAdventure, according to the statement.
The company’s mission is to support the 500,000 workshops and parts retailers run by skilled technicians with very low utilisation, no access to customers, nor the education or expertise to bring their businesses into the digital landscape.
At the same time, the company said, it wants to facilitate car owners who spend hours at workshops, often fearing getting scammed.
“These businesses and service providers cater to 150 million vehicle owners (the customers), who have to spend an average of 40 hours annually to find mechanics, electricians and spare parts for their vehicles and have to trust the workshops to repair and maintain their vehicles,” the company said.
With their platform, OkayKer aims to increase utilisation and revenue for car workshops while providing vehicle owners convenience, such as getting maintenance work done at their own location, and a warranty for the work done.
The company said their mobile application can be used by customers to place an appointment while their enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, OkayCore, enables workshops to record transactions, get new customers, source spare parts, and gain access to business tools such as payment gateways and financial services.
Starting with only three orders per day, OkayKer has successfully fixed more than 10,000 cars in the last 26 months, the company said, onboarding more than 250 vendors to supply 30,000 SKUs across Karachi to a network of 850 workshops across multiple pockets in the metropolis.
Having served over 7,500 car owners during this period, the company claims it has increased workshops’ take home revenue by 110 per cent by helping bolster their utilisation.
OkayKer is currently working on partnering with lubricant brands and has recently signed an MoU with Mobil, to help counter the prevalent problem of counterfeit products in the market.
In the coming years, OkayKer’s aim is to expand across Pakistan starting from Karachi all the way to Khunjerab, while launching the first automotive emergency service through their network of workshops.