UAE’s Seez raises $1 million for its AI-powered Shazam-like automotive marketplace

Dubai-headquartered automotive marketplace Seez has raised $1 million in funding from Lebanon’s B&Y Venture Partners and Phoenician Funds, the startup announced last week.

The funding is an extension of the $1.8 million seed round that Seez had raised last year from B&Y Venture Partners, Phoenician Funds, and Wamda Capital bringing total capital raised so far by the startup to $2.8 million.

Founded in 2015 in Lebanon by Tarek Kabrit and Andrew Kabrit, the startup is currently operational in United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. Its mobile app Seez R (available for both Android and iOS) use image recognition, artificial intelligence and a chatbot to make it easy for users to buy used and new cars.

The app aggregate cars available for sale from different resources and websites that users can search on the using different filters including make, model, mileage, price, and body type.

The app also allows users to search cars by taking picture of any car they see on the street. Its image recognition technology finds similar cars available for sale in the city/country. The users can also see the fair market value and (potential) resale price of all the cars they see on the app.

Whenever a search is launched, Cesar, a personal car concierge built inside the app negotiates the prices of available cars on behalf of the user and every time a negotiation is closed, the user is notified. It appears that the entire process is automated but we could not confirm it.

The user can the add their favorite available cars for later viewing or directly contact the seller of the car. According to Seez’ website, the app is free to use so we’re not sure about the business model here.

Its car valuator can also be used by people wanting to sell their cars to learn average market price of similar cars.

The startup plans to use the funding to expand into other regional markets and further develop their product to improve the buying process.

Earlier this year, CarSwitch, another Dubai-based automotive marketplace that takes care of the entire buying and selling process of cars on behalf of their users for a fee, had raised $1 million bringing their total funding to $2.3 million.