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| Planet42 COO, Grant Wing. |
Co-founded by Marten Orgna and Eerik Oja, Planet42, launched in 2017 as CarGet but soon changed the name to Planet42.
The founders told Witness Wheels last year the name pays homage to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by author Douglas Adams in which 42 is the answer to everything.
The founders aim to answer many people’s transport needs with their aim to buy a million cars for its customers worldwide by 2025, with plans to expand its business from Africa to Latin America.
Describing itself as “a vehicle rental company offering rent-to-buy service for private clients” Planet42’s model has proprietary software on which it relies to weed out non-payers from people who “are unfairly ignored by banks”.
The company explains it buys cars local dealers to promote financial and social inclusion in regions where the rent-to-buy model can have the greatest impact on the cycle of transport inequality. “We buy the car from the dealer and rent it to you. You drive the car and make monthly payments to Planet42.
“You have the option to buy out the car at any time for the buy-out price, which decreases every month. After 5 years the buy-out price is R5000,” the company website states.
To date, Planet42 has bought new and used cars from over 700 partner dealerships who find that normal banks turn down up to nine in 10 applications from buyers.
Planet42 COO Grant Wing said in a statement the company’s willingness to finance black-listed clients has translated into a 26% average increase in sales for dealers partners, and Planet42 is continually looking to expand its list of partner dealers to meet its ambitious goal of democratising access to mobility by providing affordable vehicle subscriptions to people unfairly overlooked by banks.
“Of the 5 000 customers served so far, 93% would not have a car without the support of Planet42 because traditional vehicle finance is overly restrictive.
“While these individuals can afford the monthly payments, banks and vehicle finance businesses would have turned them down either due to a lack of a credit record or very minor past infringements.
“We are extremely proud to have bought over 5 000 cars for South Africans so far who otherwise wouldn’t have vehicles, and we expect to keep growing at this pace or faster.
“By 2025, we want to have bought 200 000 cars in South Africa alone,” Wing said.
He told the Thrive Global website that competing car financiers in South Africa are not driven by data but by people.
Wing said without reliable transport to provide an escape route, people can become trapped in a poverty cycle, which is the trap the Planet42 wants to free them from.
He said Planet42 instead uses algorithms to make consistent credit analyses and return reliable, fair decisions on over 25 000 applications per month.
“Eliminating inconsistent decision making is the source of a large part of our profit margin.
“Our approval rating takes around 59 seconds — a speed no human can match. Further, our algorithms are constantly reviewed by data scientists, and we are constantly improving our core technologies. We’ve changed the algorithms significantly around six times in the last two years — I don’t think traditional credit analysis firms have this kind of agility,” Wing said.
