Garage
Auto parts marketplace for Africa
Garage is a wholesale auto parts distributor in Africa where there are more than 2M retailers selling $25B of auto parts annually. We aggregate parts from the largest suppliers in the world and deliver directly to retailers for a profit. Africa will have the 2nd most vehicle owners in the world by 2050 at 400M vehicles, who will each spend over $1000 annually on vehicle parts, with retail shops 'powered by Garage' being the backbone of all these transactions.
Active Founders
Gwanygha’a Gana, Founder
Gana in an ex-founder with experience building and investing in companies in the US and Africa. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Data Science from Georgia Tech, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is a casual bartender.
Cedric Foudjet, Founder
Cedric is an ex-founder and Venture Capitalist with experience building and investing in companies in Africa and South East Asia. Cedric is also a self-taught cloud computing engineer with experience helping major fortune 500 companies execute digital transformations and build a new cloud native applications. On his free time he geeks over crypto and watches shows like Billions and Succession. Cedric holds a Bachelors of Science degree from Concordia College and an MBA from Wharton.
Company Launches
Hello YC Family
This is Gana and Cedric, Co-founders at Garage.
At Garage, we are building the wholesale marketplace for auto parts in Africa
Backstory
Cedric and I are ex-founders with experience building, scaling and investing in startups in Africa. I used to buy and ship auto parts to my dad in Cameroon and realized that the landing cost once those parts arrived in Cameroon was still cheaper than buying locally. We realized that this issue was due to inefficiencies across the supply chain for parts distribution. Garage aims to solve this problem by building a wholesale marketplace that will power the $25B after sales market in Africa.
The Problem
Over $25B in auto parts sales in Africa occur at neighborhood retail shops. These retail shop owners are the backbone of the aftersales market yet they struggle to survive because
- They have no visibility into which suppliers have which parts
- Multiple layers of middle men and low buying power lead to inflated and volatile pricing
- They don’t have enough working capital to grow their businesses
The Solution
Garage is a wholesale auto parts distributor for Africa, supporting these retailers. We aggregate parts from the largest suppliers in the world and deliver directly to retailers. We are building the largest auto tech platform to reduce the cost of car ownership in Africa by making auto parts more affordable and accessible.