Leasing App Honcker Plans Expansion With $23M Funding From IAC
Vehicle leasing startup Honcker secured $23 million in series A funding this week and is using the capital injection to expand nationwide and bring some added features to its app, founder and Chief Executive Nathan Hecht told Auto Finance News today.
InterActive Corp. (IAC) — the media investor behind Investopedia, Tinder, Vimeo, and many others — is making its foray into the vehicle marketplace with this funding round to take a minority stake in the company. Honcker partners with dealers and plugs into their existing lender network to provide an online leasing marketplace.
Hect plans to staff up, expand geographically, and launch a marketing campaign targeted at consumers and dealers. He plans to partner with 1,000 dealers by yearend, up from 300 today, and wants to be active in the 20 top U.S. cities within the next 18 months. Currently, Honcker operates in eight states with its biggest city presence in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Philadelphia.
“We want to double if not triple the team within the next few weeks, hiring in areas of marketing, business development, sales, and operations,” he said. “IAC’s backing, their financial support, their know-how, and their resources will really help us in taking Honcker to the next level.”
Additionally, the company is adding three new features to its app. First, Honcker will notify younger borrowers about their possible need for a co-signer earlier in the process. Second, consumers will see lower monthly rates as taxes have been moved to the dealer signing, but they will still have the ability to move that cost back into the monthly plan. Third — and most importantly, according to Hecht — Honcker will notify consumers when they are six months out from a lease termination and offer consumers the ability to get into a new vehicle earlier.
“If you have less than six months left on your lease, the system will pick that up and will say, ‘Here’s a coupon for an early turn in, click here to access it,’ or if there is no coupon, ‘Would you like to roll in your existing lease payments and get into a new car,’” Hecht said. “It’s a feature that enhances volume for the dealership because it gets the customer out of an old car and gets them into a new car, and it’s extremely convenient for the customer.”
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