Nigeria’s bustling roads are home to nearly 14 million cars, yet many dealerships struggle with slow inventory turnover, leaving vehicles unsold for extended periods. Recognising this critical challenge, Carbin Africa, a B2B automotive startup founded in 2023, emerged with a clear mission: to enhance dealer profitability by ensuring consistent sales.
Femi Oriowo and Fawaz Abdul, the founders of Carbin Africa, first connected while participating in an OLX sales program during their studies at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) in 2015. Their subsequent careers at Cars45, an automotive startup, where they spearheaded the development of an extensive agent network for car sales, provided the foundational experience for Carbin Africa.
A string of leadership changes at Cars45 made Oriowo and Fawaz branch out on their own to do business in 2018. “In the first three years running our business, we sold over 1,000 cars,” Oriowo said. The major learning from those experiences was the difficulty in finding a repository of cars in the market and selling these vehicles fast enough.
The founders tapped COO and Co-founder, Fixit45 Pankaj Bohhra, former Cars45 CEO, Soumobroto Ganguly and Femi Folarin VP of Trade, Cars45 to build out this venture as an MVP. Leveraging on the wealth of their mentors, Carbin Africa was incubated under 54 Collective’s Gen F program—a venture studio, which led to their incorporation in 2023.
“We went through a three-month business incubation program where we did a lot of concept validation and testing of the business. We got a lot of support. We also faced a panel who judged our work,” Oriowo added.
Carbin Africa claims to not compete with any other automotive startup as it plays a complementary role in the ecosystem. Fix45 and YC backed Mecho Autotech deal with spare parts and after-sales. Cars45 and Autochek deal with car sourcing and vehicle financing. The startup says its business serves car dealers and car agents who need a repository of cars and swift turnover. The African Automotive Market size is estimated at $20.5 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $26.30 billion by 2029. Carbin Africa wants 10% of the market.
“If you are a car dealer, it takes about six weeks to ship. If you factor in clearing from the port, that is two additional weeks, “Oriwo, CEO and Co-founder of Carbin Africa said. “Many car dealers end up putting the cars in the garage and looking for other means of making money. We want to change that.”
The company has already achieved significant traction, exceeding a billion Naira in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) since March 2024, selling more than 80 cars. A key differentiator is the company’s AI-powered data platform. This innovative tool provides real-time access to 1,800 unique car listings across all dealerships, updated every 30 minutes. This empowers over 200 dealers and 850 agents onboarded on its platform to make informed decisions, identify high-demand models, and optimize their inventory. “Data aggregation has been our mode of operation from day one but we enhanced it in H2 2024,” Oriowo said.
Usually, 10 sellers can post the same car online say on social media or Jiji. But the cars on Carbin Africa are constantly updated and live in all the locations. In addition, users get a mini report on the state of the car, Abdul, co-founder of Carbin Africa explained during a demo session at their Lagos-based office. Automating the car data and adding more dealerships and agents to the platform has enhanced buying decisions.
Agents and car dealers who want to join Carbin Africa’s network must present their CAC details and NIN for background checks and to avoid cases of car theft. They must also have at least five cars before they can be onboarded. A partnership with another automotive startup helps to check against stolen cars. Their website is not directly customer-facing. It allows only car agents and owners of dealerships to sign up or view available cars which leads to sale conversions.
This data has helped the startup to understand that most people buy cars in the festive season or mid-year when they receive gains from their cooperative. 90% of the cars on Nigeria roads are used cars and only around 5% are new cars. “It also helps us to understand the routes through which cars enter the country,” Oriowo said.
Macroeconomic conditions are some of the biggest challenges to automotive startups. Mecho Autotech was forced to layoff staff last week from its 40-person team. But Oriowo believes that the market adjusts.
“When there is a constraint, the market might react for some time. In April and May, we started doing better numbers. The use of our data points is helping us see trends. Many dealers run on experience and not data. Aggregating data points from the dealerships we are plugged into helps us understand the brands that sell based on location. It varies from Lekki to places like Festac. It also tells you brands to avoid,” Oriowo explained.
This is a game-changer for agents, Abdul said. The traditional method for car agents is to check car dealerships manually. However with this enhanced data tool, agents are no longer restricted to a certain location in their local government, they can see cars beyond their current location and sell more vehicles. The company also created a leaderboard to gamify the selling process.
Autohub, the B2B side of the business that helps dealers sell cars quickly is the company’s largest revenue earner and flagship. Even though Oriowo declined to share any figures. Carbin Africa makes money by charging a healthy markup on its vehicles. With the introduction of its analytics and CRM for dealers, it could turn its profitability metrics around.
Aside from this flagship product, Carbin Africa offers other products like Dealer Mart, Car Flex and Carbin Lease. Dealer Mart is a software-as-a-service that is directed at car dealers. This product makes use of all the insights received from a dealership to automate inventory sourcing, vehicle listings, quality verification and several other needs tailored to a business. Car Flex is a credit facility that is given to support dealers who struggle through tough macroeconomic environments to sell vehicles. Digital lending platform, Advancly helps to offer these loans. Carbin Lease is a service that the business introduced to lease cars-luxury or not to avoid them lying unsold in a dealership.
Carbin Africa is a resource for Carloha Nigeria, an exclusive distributor of Chevy vehicles and also provides cars for Sterling Bank’s car finance platform, AltDrive.
The company is eyeing profitability in the near term by aggressively pushing the value-added products alongside its flagship to its customers who are dealers.
