#StartUpSpotlight: Motoriety Offers ‘Hassle-Free’ Vehicle Ownership

In this week’s StartUp Spotlight, we speak with Lucy Burnford – Founder of Motoriety – a web-based platform that seeks to transform the way we manage vehicle ownership and maintenance …

Elevator Pitch:

Motoriety is the first and only online platform where motorists can manage all aspects of car ownership. Motoriety can be used by motorists for administration and maintenance in one secure online space, and create a verified digital service history, or AUTObiography, for their vehicle.

Why it’s taking off?

Nothing like Motoriety currently exists. It’s a highly disruptive offering that has the opportunity to transform the motoring industry. We’ve already caught the attention of established organisations and major investors who we’re in talks with. Motoriety addresses and solves four key, longstanding issues for both motorists and the industry:

1. Keeping track of legal responsibilities: As a car owner, keeping track of your legal and maintenance responsibilities is a fractured mess. One third of people have admitted to driving their car without a valid Ministry of Transport test (MOT) – it’s not intentional, but knowing when anything is due on your car or your legal obligations is a minefield because there are usually no reminders. Motoriety automates all the admin and flags up key dates and special offers for services and MOTs via a simple click-to-book process.
2. Maintaining vehicle history: Keeping valuable paperwork adds value to the resale price of your car, but motorists are notoriously bad at keeping receipts and documentation. It’s estimated that having an up-to-date ‘full service history’ can add as much as 26% to the value of your car.
3. Building a reliable ‘reviews’ ratings system: Before we launched there were no trustworthy garage review sites, since anyone could post a potentially false review, so we built a unique two-way review and rating system. Motoriety garages have to digitally verify the work completed on a vehicle directly to customers’ Motoriety accounts and, once the customer has rated and reviewed the garage, this entry appears in the user’s AUTObiography.
4. Improving motorist-industry communication: The motoring industry has long struggled with successful marketing to motorists – a major reason for this stems from not knowing who owns what vehicle at the time. With Motoriety, since the motorist manages their own account, we can be sure that only tailored, relevant offers and information are communicated to motorists at exactly the right time. This saves time, money and irrelevant communications for the industry, and keeps motorists happy.

How did it start?

The idea came from a series of painful and costly motoring experiences. I was frustrated that every aspect of owning and running a car was fraught with risk and expense. Having bought a second hand car with a ‘full service history’ from a reputable dealer, I was shocked to find that a few weeks later it needed an urgent repair that left me £3,500 poorer. I realised the term ‘full service history’ is not comprehensive since it doesn’t cover all maintenance work that the car may, or may not, have undergone, meaning the data is actually incomplete.

Out of frustration, I initially developed the Motoriety offering from a motorist perspective – to address the hassle and uncertainty of car ownership. Partnering with Olli Astley (now co-Founder and CTO of Motoriety), who has over 20 years’ experience working in automotive technology, helped drive the business forward and brought further valuable insight into the industry that otherwise would have taken far longer to grasp.

And the financing?

We are privately funded at present but are looking to raise angel investment in the near future.

What next?

Our aim is to transform the way vehicle ownership and maintenance are managed and to become the default platform for all motorists in the UK to manage everything to do with their cars. We want motorists to think “How did we manage before Motoriety?!

We’d like our unique digital service history – called an AUTObiography – which documents everything from having a tyre changed to a major restoration, to be a widely referenced benchmark that replaces the current, misleading term: ‘full service history’.

StartUp Spotlight is a weekly column where LSBF speaks with the leaders of young start-ups and businesses with a view to inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs. If you’d like your company to be featured here, contact us via blog@lsbf.org.uk