Edinburgh-based startup Fresh Car Valeting has launched a new app as it embarks on a £1 million investment round.

The move comes as the car care company plans a rapid expansion across the UK and aims to capture a major part of the £1.2 billion UK market.

Fresh is also adding an option for online payments and a subscription service.

The company plans to add features to the app over the next twelve months, and in the longer term are aiming to add car services like tyre and oil changing, and scratch removal to the overall Fresh offering.

After expanding across the Central Belt of Scotland and the North of England over the last eighteen months, Fresh plans to increasingly target the Midlands and South of England in 2022.

The company currently has 28 operators and 21,000 customers across the UK, adding new locations in Liverpool, Warrington, Bolton, Wigan, Stockport, Swansea, and Kent during 2021.

Fresh Car Valeting CEO Sam Brennan, a Scottish EDGE winner in 2020, said: “We want to revolutionise the way people manage their car care and customer satisfaction is absolutely central to that. The market of 31 million users across the UK is worth more than £1.2 billion so making it as simple as possible to deal with us is vital.

“Launching a new app does exactly that. Fresh is expanding rapidly because we provide a fantastic customer service across all our franchises and people are sick and tired of sub-standard care.”

As part of its expansion plans, the company is looking to build partnerships with car and car care-related industry partners. The company is in active discussions with several groups that Fresh’s CEO believes will be transformational to the company’s future growth.

Brennan added: “We see a lot of value-creation opportunities around partnering with other industry players in ways that improve our breadth of offering to customers, so that’s going to be integral to our strategy over the next couple of years.”

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Commenting on its next external investment round, a pre-series A round, to support its next phase of growth, Brennan said: “We are in an exciting place at the moment, doubling revenue on the platform at the beginning of the year, bringing three new people into the team and launching some significant tech updates.

“Bookings are now completely automated across all our UK locations, and we’re achieving high customer satisfaction levels. We feel like we’ve proved the business model and now its time to go for some external investment and take things to the next level.”