Cardiff car insurance tech business completes fundraising round - will use investment to grow its customer base

Driverly will use the investment to grow its customer base in the coming year, providing its app to even more businesses, and developing its proprietary technology

The Development Bank, investing from the Wales Tech Seed Fund and the Wales Flexible Investment Fund, was joined by a syndicate led by veteran investor and Rebel Syndicate founder Simon Bell. This is along with long-term business dealmaker and Women Angels of Wales member Annie Finlayson; serial investor Peter Saunders OBE and entrepreneur Darryl Morton. 

The Wales Angel Co-Fund matched investment by the syndicate. 

The group was also joined by other angels with professional backgrounds in finance and tech, former serial entrepreneurs and Armin Kia's fellow graduates of Manchester University’s MBA programme.

Armin Kia, CEO of Driverly, said: "We’re delighted with the level of support we’ve received from Angels Invest Wales and the co-investment syndicate led by Simon. Having angels like Simon, Annie, Peter and Darryl come on board gives us access to a huge pool of business experience from veteran entrepreneurs who have started, supported and exited a number of businesses across Wales, and we’re hugely looking forward to the things we’ll be able to accomplish together.

"We’ve always been keen to keep a fine balance between keeping a focus on our core business, while also being prepared to react to the demands of the market. That’s an important task for any leadership team. The Development Bank of Wales and our new investors can see the wider market and help us with that."

Simon Bell, lead investor, said: "We have a lot of strong experience in this syndicate, and we’re really excited to put that mix of expertise to good use at Driverly. Their team is made up of experts, but they’re also humble and ready to make changes when they need to.

"And we were all very impressed by Driverly’s recent pivot from a B2C business to a B2B model, leveraging their existing work and insights in a different way.  Their model allows insurance businesses to tweak and refine their app without having to embed it in a large ICT department, meaning they can rapidly adapt it to meet customer needs."

It marks the second round of investment the business has received from the Development Bank of Wales. This follows the investment of £250,000 in equity during a pre-seed investment round in 2022, joined by Manuel Santiago and Duncan Russell, former CFO at Admiral Financial Services.

Linzi Plant, assistant investment executive at the Development Bank of Wales, said: "Driverly have consistently proven their adaptability and ingenuity in an ever-evolving market, and we’re glad our support has been able to leverage co-investment from some very high-profile Angel investors, who will add their talents and experience to Driverly’s core team."

GS Verde supported Driverly throughout the equity investment deal and provided end-to-end expert advice to ensure its growth strategy success.

Nestor Alonso, co-founder and chief data officer of Driverly, said: "We found GS Verde a great company to work with. We chose GS Verde because of the experience with the people, the cost and the service obtained, it was to our understanding, the bestbalance. Their dedication made a complex, multi-investor process much easier.

"We are very happy with the team and we are looking forward to working with them on future projects."

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