Melbourne early-stage firm Pitch Venture Capital has led a $400,000 pre-seed fundraising round for online auto repairs equipment and supplies marketplace Auto Repairs Direct (ARD).
Other investors in the round include Christchurch, New Zealand, based online autoparts database technology company Partly (APE&VCJ, Nov 2021), an investee of Blackbird Ventures. Melbourne-based ARD plans to use some of the new capital to introduce Partly’s technology to manage inventory on its website.
ARD claims to be Australia’s leading online marketplace for auto repair equipment, such as spray guns, and supplies. The company recently recorded $1 million in monthly gross revenue. ARD is expected to move quickly to raise a seed round.
ARD was founded in 2015 by Shane Purss, Stephen Wools and Ross McClunie who currently retain ownership of most of the company.
Pitch Venture Capital was co-founded in 2020 by managing director Campbell Walshe, previously of start-up education and advisory business Pitchblak. Other partners include Jamn music app founder Johnny Quattro. The team are initially investing a pre-seed round launched with capital raising expectations of $2 million. They plan to invest in around 100 start-ups from the seed fund. Following that, they plan to raise a minimum $20 million tax-advantaged Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partner (ESVCLP) fund to provide follow-up investments into their most successful seed fund investees.
Pitchblak ceased operations after eight years when other former partners Kim Teoh and Adrian Osman switched their focus to the start-up they had founded, digital menus and QR code ordering and payment system Mr Yum. PitchVC was an early investor in Mr Yum, which raised $89 million in its Series A capital raise in November (APE&VCJ, Dec 2021). Other investments by PitchVC so far include: nūdo, baresop, cnsdose., ParentTV and vygo.