Italy’s MotorK, a company that offers digital services to the automotive industry, raises $10M Series A

MotorK, an Italian company that offers a number of digital products to the automotive industry, has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was led by 83North, with participation from Zobito, a Swedish private equity and VC firm.

Founded in 2010 and launched at Mike Butcher’s GeeknRolla conference the same year (oh, how I miss those days when nobody knew my name), MotorK was, in co-founder and CEO Marco Marlia’s own words, set up to “revolutionise the creation, management and conversion of leads in the automotive sector by the power of digital”. The company’s products and services aim to help the automotive supply chain sell more auto vehicles, from helping dealers build an online presence to offering a better car buying experience to consumers.

“Our comprehensive end-to-end approach looks after the sales cycle of a car. We’re now servicing 90 per cent of European car brands and over 100,000 dealers,” says Marlia.

Amongst its offerings are DriveK, a new European car marketplace that could be considered a competitor to something like Carwow, and a SaaS platform for car dealers called DealerK. The company also runs Internet Motors, which claims to be the largest digital automotive event network in the EMEA region.

Noteworthy, this is the first time MotorK has taken outside funding, having bootstrapped the company, and says it’s been profitable for the last six years. It also claims “triple-digit growth year on year,” (as vague as that is) and has expanded from its home turf of Italy to Spain, U.K., France, and Germany. I’m told the new capital will be used to enter other European markets.

Laurel Bowden, Partner at 83North, said in a statement: “Today’s announcement is a reflection of our commitment to supporting top talent in the European tech sector as we seek to add value to entrepreneurs with our extensive network and experience of high growth companies. We share a common operating philosophy and we look forward to collaborating with the MotorK team.”