In Founder Focus we introduce entrepreneurs and change-makers working on innovative startups, social enterprises and SME’s around Aotearoa New Zealand.
At a glance
Founders: Levi Fawcett, Nathan Taylor, Mark Song, Evan Jia, Tony Austin
Business: Partly
Founded: 2020
HQ: Canterbury
Can you tell us a bit about your business?
Partly’s mission is to connect the world’s parts. We’re building global data infrastructure for the automotive parts industry, helping manufacturers, and retailers to organise, standardise and publish their data. Our novel technology brings billions of part links globally into one common library.
We’re driven by the passion to unlock offline inventory, reduce environmental impact, and enhance online accessibility, ensuring a sustainable and efficient future for automotive parts procurement.
What’s the backstory for your business idea?
Partly was born out of a huge unsolved data problem. The $1.9trillion auto parts industry is traditional and largely offline due to extremely complex data challenges. There are millions of vehicle configurations, hundreds of millions of parts, and trillions of connections between them. As a result, data is fragmented with no common language across brands and countries.
Partly’s founders encountered this problem running a general classified marketplace. They consistently observed that listing vehicle parts presented a significant hurdle for their sellers. As buyers of parts themselves, the founders also recognized the difficulty of sourcing parts in an industry that was still largely offline and phone-based.
After going down the rabbit hole and deeply researching the automotive data landscape they decided to start Partly in 2020 with a mission to connect the worlds parts
What programmes, learning or mentoring, or resources have been of assistance so far?
Peter Beck (Rocket Lab) was important in helping us understand ambition and what we could achieve from New Zealand.
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