Carwow Group has appointed Hizam Sahibudeen as Chief Technology Officer and added Rinesh Sheth to its Executive Team, expanding the senior leadership group at the online car marketplace and media business.
Sahibudeen will oversee technology strategy and lead the Engineering and IT & Security teams from Carwow's London headquarters. Reporting to Chief Executive Officer John Veichmanis, he succeeds David Santoro as the group's top technology leader. Santoro will remain in the engineering organisation as Principal Engineer.
Sahibudeen brings more than two decades of technology leadership experience across the US, Europe and Asia. He has held product and engineering roles at companies including ShipMonk and GotPhoto.
Earlier in his career, he joined streaming business iflix at launch and helped scale the service to 50 million users across 27 countries. He later led technology strategy at Newstore, working on retail systems used by brands including Lego and Fossil.
Sheth has joined the Executive Team after serving as General Counsel since 2024. In that role, he built Carwow's legal function and led legal work on several of the group's commercial transactions.
His appointment gives Legal & Compliance direct representation at executive level as the business grows. Sheth has more than 20 years of international legal experience spanning cross-border mergers and acquisitions, commercial deals and corporate governance.
Before joining Carwow, he spent more than 11 years at Informa in a series of commercial and corporate leadership roles. He later served as General Counsel for M&A and Global Support, supporting an acquisition-led period in which the company's market value rose from £2.5 billion to £10 billion.
He began his legal career at Dentons, where he trained and qualified before spending eight years advising on public and private cross-border M&A, joint ventures and governance matters.
Leadership shift
The changes come as Carwow continues to build a group structure combining automotive commerce with publishing brands. The business was formed after Carwow acquired Autovia, bringing together titles including Auto Express, Evo, Driving Electric, Driving Power and Driver Power alongside the core Carwow platform.
The combined operation gives the group a large audience across digital, video, print and social channels. It reports more than 144 million annual website visits, over 1.1 billion yearly YouTube views, 1.2 million print copies of Auto Express and Evo sold, and annual social media reach of more than 651 million.
The CTO appointment signals a stronger focus on technology leadership as competition intensifies in digital automotive retail and publishers seek new ways to integrate commerce, content and data. It also marks a handover from one of the business's original technical leaders to an external executive with experience scaling international teams.
Veichmanis said: "Hizam is a proven champion of AI-native engineering practices and data-driven decision-making, meaning he has the experience, vision and energy to deliver world-class capabilities as we continue to scale the Carwow platform.
"As our business continues to grow in scale and complexity, having Legal & Compliance represented at Executive level is the right step for the next chapter of Carwow Group. Rinesh brings not only deep legal expertise but also sound commercial judgement and a genuine commitment to our mission and culture. His perspective will be invaluable as we navigate the opportunities ahead."