Barcelona, September 5, 2023. Wayra, Telefónica's open innovation initiative, is investing in Cafler to boost its national and international development and growth, as part of an €8 million seed round.
Cafler, founded by Ricard Guillem and Íñigo Diego, is an application that simplifies any process that vehicle users, both individuals and professionals, may need. Companies can offer the full range of services a vehicle requires throughout its lifecycle, from maintenance, repairs, and tire changes to any administrative procedures such as insurance, paperwork, etc.
Cafler has raised nearly €10 million since its inception.
This recent seed round, led by Seaya Ventures, included Wayra and investors such as Banco Sabadell, Encomenda, Dídac Lee, René de Jong, and Jacky Abitbol, partner at Cathay Innovation. Cafeler offers its clients a platform with flexible and customized interfaces tailored to the needs of each segment, allowing them to contract its services through its API or via integrations with its mobile application. Cafler is also developing fleet management software and a dashboard where customers can view all their vehicle data. For Ricard Guillem, founder of Cafler: “Data is the backbone of our platform. We have created a robust data lake and incorporated artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, allowing us to offer a more proactive experience to our users, for example: predictive maintenance, personalized cross-selling suggestions, and visualization of relevant information at any given time.” Marta Antúnez, director of Wayra Barcelona, points out: “Cafler is a platform that is transforming and digitizing the large automotive services sector, a still traditional and fragmented sector, in which we believe there is a great opportunity to improve the user experience by offering greater data transparency, more convenience, and better access to the best prices.” Furthermore, Antúnez believes that “there are very interesting synergies with Telefónica's commitment to the mobility sector and with the Movistar Car and Movistar Car Protect services, so we are delighted to become a strategic partner and incorporate them into our portfolio, supporting their expansion and growth.” Cafler works with major clients including brands such as Renault, Tesla, Virtuo, Hertz, Michelin, Sixt, Turo, Norauto, and Feuvert, among others. The company has provided nearly 150,000 services since its inception just a year and a half ago and is already available in three regions where it has achieved operational profitability and is experiencing triple-digit annual growth.
About Cafler
Cafler is the leading platform for everything a vehicle user needs, just a click away (from on-demand home services—like car washes, maintenance, and fuel—to (via Partners) insurance, leasing, parking, and buying/selling cars). Our vision is to make life easier for vehicle users, both in terms of convenience and cost, and thereby disrupt the current consumption paradigm in the automotive industry. The company already operates in more than 3 countries, serving over 100,000 users and more than 1,000 partners in its ecosystem.
About Wayra
Since 2011, Wayra has been Telefónica's main program connecting it with the entrepreneurial ecosystem around the world, through which we invest in and create our own startups. It has seven spaces covering nine countries in Latin America and Europe, through which it invests in and supports startups; Wayra Builder, a corporate venture builder to create innovative startups born from Telefónica's internal technology projects alongside other investors. In addition, through the Wayra Activation Programme, it offers entrepreneurs exclusive and free access to new technologies through Telefónica's own platforms. In these eleven years, we have invested €66M in 850 startups and currently have more than 400 startups in our portfolio, of which more than 165 work with Telefónica.
More information available at www.wayra.es