To expand its pan-African presence, Nigeria’s Autochek acquires majority of Egypt’s AutoTager

In order to expand its presence in North Africa and foster the business’ continued growth, Nigeria’s Autochek, an auto-tech company that makes car ownership more accessible and affordable throughout Africa, has announced the purchase of a majority stake in Egypt’s AutoTager.

Aiming to improve and enable a seamless and secure automotive commerce experience across Africa, Autochek was founded in 2020. By creating a single marketplace for customers’ automotive needs, from sourcing and financing to after-sale support and warranties, the company uses technology to transform the automotive buying and selling experience for African consumers.

A key component of the startup’s rapid expansion strategy has been acquisitions. After purchasing the automotive marketplaces Cheki Nigeria and Cheki Ghana from ROAM Africa, Autochek debuted in September 2020. It has also expanded to Kenya and Uganda in addition to Ghana, with the latter two launches once more being made possible by the purchase of Cheki properties.

In order to advance its expansion into the North Africa region, it purchased Moroccan competitor KIFAL Auto in May. The startup also acquired CoinAfrique in July, expanding into the Ivory Coast, Senegal, and other French-speaking nations after raising US$13.1 million in seed funding last year for West African expansion.

With the purchase of a majority stake in AutoTager, a venture-backed startup that is reducing the difficulty of accessing vetted vehicles and financing for consumers and connecting dealers with serious buyers and technology solutions to improve their operations, Autochek is now expanding its presence in North Africa and entering the Egyptian market.

Amr Rezk, a successful serial entrepreneur who also co-founded the industry-leading private equity GP/LP coordination platform Fundseer, founded the business in 2021.

With a partner-led footprint of more than 2,000 dealers and workshop locations, Autochek now has active operations in nine countries throughout East, West, and North Africa.

“Amr’s background and track record is as impressive as it gets and I am delighted to have him on board. His experience will be invaluable as we enter the Egyptian market and continue on our mission to improve the automotive finance value proposition on the continent and catalyse more growth across the automotive ecosystem. There are many parallels between Autochek and AutoTager, and we are looking forward to building on these parallels to deliver more growth and success in the months and years to come,” said Olajide Adamolekun, Group CFO and co-founder of Autochek.

In order to pursue several sizable and distinctive opportunities in the automotive industry, Rezk said he was “thrilled” to work with Autochek.

“Autochek has deep automotive expertise and brings a proven playbook and several all-weather strategies that have been tested and validated in multiple complex high growth markets. The company’s track record of concurrently operating various business models in the automotive space is stellar and provides us with a wide menu of options and cutting-edge tools to offer AutoTager’s customers a truly unique proposition,” he said.

“We have very exciting plans and are confident that the global OEM and financing partnerships that Autochek has secured will also provide us with differentiated access allowing us to lead in our space while targeting high quality top decile returns.”