Available in Multilingual Services Financing Headquarters London | Area served England Employees 10-50 (2016) Founded 2013 | |
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Founder(s) Petko Plachkov, Imran Gulamhuseinwala Key people Petko Plachkov (Founder, MD)
Imran Gulamhuseinwala (Founder, Chairman) Motto "Better Value for UK Commuters" | ||
CommuterClub is a UK-based financial services company backed by British tennis player Andy Murray that retails and provides loans for annual season tickets, allowing commuters to pay for them in monthly instalments. CommuterClub was founded in 2013 by Petko Plachkov and Imran Gulamhuseinwala. Imran was honoured for his work in the FinTech industry in January 2017 in the Queen's Honour list with an OBE. As of 2016 CommuterClub had over 10,000 customers and £20mn of loans to date.
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History
CommuterClub was founded by Petko Plachkov and Imran Gulamhuseinwala after they met while working in financial services at Resolution. They found through a Freedom of Information request to TfL that fewer than 10% of the 2.5 million people travelling around the capital each day benefit from the savings of season tickets. Following this finding, they created a monthly payment plan to offer access to annual season tickets for public transport.
CommuterClub works with RateSetter to provide its payment plans, using the peer-to-peer funding model. This is claimed to reduce costs for consumers.
CommuterClub successfully raised over £2mn to date. It completed a £500,000 angel investment in early 2014 followed by an angel round of £750,000 in May 2015. In July CommuterClub raised a further £1.2mn with the support of British tennis player Andy Murray. Through its funding rounds CommuterClub has crowdfunded via the Seedrs platform. CommuterClub therefore is crowdfunded on both its loans and equity.
The business expanded across the UK in 2015 covering Oyster and National Rail Season tickets.
Corporate
CommuterClub also works with SMEs to help them offer season tickets to staff as an employee benefit. CommuterClub automates the management of a season ticket scheme reducing cost and outsourcing a traditionally payroll managed solution. Current clients include Croydon Council, Airbnb and Integrafin.
Awards and Recognition
CommuterClub has been named Startup of the week in Wired Magazine as well as won awards at the Startups Awards for Service Business of the Year and the Everline Real Business Awards for Disruptor of the Year. CommuterClub also made FinTechCity's FinTech 50 in 2015.