NEW YORK -

One of the honorees among this year’s Emerging 8 appearing at this summer's Automotive Intelligence Summit now is operating under a new brand name.

On-demand auto leasing startup Rodo, previously known as Honcker, recently exited beta with a major update to its core product, bringing what it called “unprecedented transparency and efficiency” to the consumer-dealer relationship.

The venture-backed startup provides a three-step, digital leasing process for more than 150,000 vehicles from every major manufacturer, directly through its mobile app and website. Rodo can calculate personalized pricing for each customer. Rodo shoppers can finalize their lease and arrange for free home delivery, all without ever visiting a dealership.

Rodo also released its new rebates, incentives, coupons engine (RICE), which uses natural language processing and machine learning to find and extract all relevant discounts based on the individual shopper, applying them automatically to the monthly payment.

Given its scope and scalability, company leadership believes Rodo’s new technology platform has the potential to become the industry standard for all digital lease and finance transactions. To reflect this evolution of the brand and technology, and its ongoing commitment to positive change in the auto industry, Rodo partnered with Red Antler, a leading brand agency, to craft its new identity.

“The Honcker brand was about bringing the arduous auto leasing process into the 21st century. Now, with the core components in place, we can look towards improving everything around it,” said Nathan Hecht, chief executive officer and founder of Rodo.

“The re-brand to Rodo reflects our commitment to consumers: to elevate the car leasing experience to one that is worthy of the new car itself,” Hecht continued in a news release. “Rodo is about a fast, convenient, and transparent path to a new vehicle, all while ensuring the best possible price. This is a giant leap forward for the auto industry to finally bring the transaction online.”

As brick-and-mortar dealerships face increasing competition from e-commerce, the Rodo platform can function as an online extension of the dealer’s showroom, generating leases on their behalf and on their terms.

As of July, Rodo has achieved more than 500% growth in dealer partnerships year-over-year, with now more than 1,000 dealerships on the platform in 15 markets, generating thousands of leases for its partners nationwide.

“Local dealers are a vital part of our platform. We’re focused on making it easier for dealers to grow their own sales while lowering their overhead. These partnerships are also the reason that all of the vehicles on Rodo are actually available in real-time at the best price,” Hecht said.

“That’s not always the case in this industry, where many players are simply generating leads on vehicles that may or may not be on the lot and pricing remains ambiguous,” he went on to say.

Rodo is available for both iOS and Android and online at Rodo.com.