He just wanted to sell his motorcycle, and not even five years later, he has more than a thousand of these vehicles on display in an industrial warehouse, a company with a turnover of 15 million euros and 200 employees under his charge. Mundimotoa portal for buying and selling motorcycles mainly online, has multiplied its business by seven in the last year and expects to invoice €150 million this 2022, which would mean growing ten times in a single year. “There is an opportunity to go down in history and we want to take advantage of it: we are going to death,” declare the founders of the business, who know they are the only ones in Europe doing what they do and who have also just secured a capital injection of 20 million euros from the Italian venture capital firm P101, a US fund (Autotech) and an Israeli fund (Manif).
“We could have grown organically, but there is a momentum now: there is no one else in the market”, says the CEO and co-founder of the start-up, Joseph Talavera. “The level of growth that we want to achieve this year needs investment yes or yes: we could have doubled or tripled the business, but the intention is to multiply it by ten”, specifies the co-founder and origin of everything, Alberto Fossas.
Because the start of this company dates back to the moment when this entrepreneur from Mataró (Barcelona) noticed how easy it was to sell a motorcycle online. So much so that he decided to start touring Spain looking for vehicles of this type to sell them later for a little more expensive. “Maybe I bought 50 motorcycles in a year,” he recalls pits. “I was looking for the best offer, I looked at the way to go for the motorcycles in the most economical way possible, and I brought them: doing that repeatedly gives you knowledge and facilities to tackle a process that is very cumbersome for those who are not used to it”, raises. She talks about the name change, the evaluation of technical aspects, the risk of deception, and a long string of etcetera.
The question is that to fix and clean the mopeds himself, and from selling them through Milanuncios or Wallapop, he went on to look for the vehicles from the owner of a dealer outside the country. And from there, he set up his own motorcycle rental company.
“In the midst of all this madness, Josep, who had his own company [es el fundador de Decowood]recommended that I get serious and structure the project”, continues this motor enthusiast. “We founded a company, we rented a place in Mataró and we began to see what would happen”, he adds pits.
What happened is that they billed a million euros and were profitable from the first year. Twelve months later they doubled this figure. And in the third year, already in 2021, with a more ambitious business plan and the help of a financing round of 1.3 million euros, they stood at 15 million euros in revenue. “It’s a supply and demand issue. [y muchos conocimientos de publicidad on line]: we had the motorcycles 100 euros cheaper because we were going to look for them without much structure, with which we could get good prices”, he analyzes Talavera.
This growth has also been transferred to the space from which they operate and in which they have motorcycles on display for those who want to buy them in person (25% of their public): they have gone from the four motorcycles with which they started, to having 1,050 in stock; from starting the year in a 300 m2 premises, to working in one of 17,000 with four floors and its own industrial workshop; and from being less than 10 workers a year ago, to setting up a staff of 200 people. In fact, they plan to hire another 200 this year.
The keys to this development have been to put its processes to work in reverse as well (users can sell their vehicle to Mundimoto, which saves the company from searching for a product), to have an internal logistics system that optimizes vehicle collection and delivery routes, and having made two major signings: Alex Loperaco-founder of Verse, as chief operating officer, and Fabián Patusformerly the factory manager of Clickars, as a pilot for the company’s industrialization plan.
And now, the company is ready to go further, both in terms of borders and in terms of the definition of the company. “We have established ourselves as the Spanish leader, so now we want to expand into markets outside of Spain,” he explains. Talaveraspecifying that 15% of its sales are already abroad but only through dealers and that the current growth plan contemplates opening spaces like the one they have in Barcelona in these countries.
On the other hand, the strategy involves emulating what Housfy has done in the real estate market: cover all branches involved in the process of buying a motorcycle, starting with the sale of the moped and reaching the accessories or insurance market. “We want that when someone thinks of motorcycles and everything that surrounds them, they think of us -they conclude-: that not only is Mundimoto buying or selling, but that it is Mundimoto, it simplifies the service for me”.