Joe Waggott Metal Polishing Supplies wins again

Ecommerce entrepreneur Joe Waggott has WON first place and scooped a £30,000 prize in this year’s Stelios Award for disabled entrepreneurs in the UK.   

Joe owns Metal Polishing Supplies UK Ltd, the UK’s leading supplier of professional and DIY metal polishing products. Arriving in the UK from Zimbabwe in 2005 with just £35 in his pocket he has built the business from scratch, selling kits and accessories through Amazon, eBay and his website – metalpolishingsupplies.co.uk. We first wrote about Joe when he won an eBay for Business Award in 2017, and his is a really inspirational story.

Joe has worked PHL Group for many years – they provide his business with expert fulfilment support, essential for Joe to enable him to concentrate on growth. PHL Group told us how incredibly proud of his fantastic achievement they are.

We are incredibly proud of Joe’s achievement and thrilled our fulfilment services continue to help this fantastic business grow

– Laura Palmer, Business Development Director, PHL Group

The Stelios Awards is the brainchild of EasyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou and leading disability charity Leonard Cheshire. The award aims to recognise individuals who overcome the challenges of a disability to become successful business owners. The award is primarily judged on commercial astuteness and financial performance, focusing on the entrants’ achievements and not their disability. 

Joe was born with Spina Bifida and has limited mobility, requiring a walking stick or wheelchair to get around and sometimes working from the confines of his bed. Ecommerce offers Joe the flexibility to develop and grow sales from anywhere if he has a laptop and internet connection.

Joe believes that one of the essential drivers of his ongoing success is partnering with PHL Group, which manages his customer support and order fulfilment across multiple sales channels. Their purpose-built Order Management System (OMS) gives Joe the accessibility to manage his business remotely whilst PHL fulfilment experts take care of day-to-day logistics.

Winning first place for the Stelios Awards for Disabled Entrepreneurs 2022 is a great achievement for me and Metal Polishing Supplies UK Ltd and offers an excellent opportunity for further development and future business growth.

PHL Group has been key to the success of MPS as it stands today with their continued support and development of the business allowing me time to be able to work on the business instead of in the business.

– Joe Waggott , Metal Polishing Supplies UK

Using his prize money, Joe has ambitions to invest in video content marketing and create a range of own-brand tools. 

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Frasers group acquires stake in Australian marketplace MySale

Frasers group are on a spending spree and have acquired a 28.7% holding in the Australian-based fashion marketplace, MySale. This bumps their stake up from 4.8% as acquired in 2019 and follows their increased stake in fashion brand Hugo Boss.

The company have not disclosed any information about the amount that they paid for the shares in MySale, a marketplace originally founded in Australia in 2007. Today the platform sells apparel and homewear to customers in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.

The Group believes this creates an opportunity for a strategic partnership whereby end of line Group products can be cleared via an established clearance channel. This pipeline will be further enhanced by the benefits of counter seasonality between the European and Australian climates.

– Frasers Group

Mike Ashley’s Frasers group pulled missguided out of administration for £20 million at the start of June. It was the first fast fashion retailer that the company would have under its belt. The clever running theme with Frasers group is that they have a collection of companies who sell goods from third-party brands, particularly apparel. Having a range of brands who cover a range of markets whilst selling a range of familiar brands gives the company more opportunities to tailor their offerings across the globe as and when needed.

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Marketing automation startup Rocket Reach nabs $24M for expansion

Retail Rocket, a retention management platform for brands, today announced that it raised $24 million in a Series A round led by Cyprus-based private equity fund Flintera. In addition to the fundraising, Rocket Rocket revealed that it acquired SailPlay, a startup developing software to help retailers build loyalty programs and send mass message campaigns.

New York-based SailPlay had raised $3.3 million prior to the acquisition. Founded in 2013 by Leonid Shangin and Yakov Filippenko, the company offered services to collect customer data and leverage it to create games, texts, and tasks designed to encourage repeat business.

As for Retail Rocket, it launched in 2012 headed by Moscow School of Management classmates, Nick Khlebinsky and Andrey Chizh, who’d attempted but failed to gain traction with several startups. The learnings from their previous efforts were the springboard for Retail Rocket, which after multiple pivots eventually grew its customer base to over 1,000 companies including Nintendo, Puma, and Decathlon.

“The digital marketing world is growing very fast and the demand for highly-skilled professionals is constantly increasing,” CEO Khlebinsky said. “The complexity of digital marketing tools is booming too — just several years ago we couldn’t imagine the technologies we use today.”

According to Khlebinsky, Retail Rocket uses a mathematical model to segment first-time buyers of a company’s product. By analyzing their actions — for example, the links they click on — the platform attempts to figure out their wants and preferences.

Image Credits: Retail Rocket

Retail Rocket also offers tools for campaign management like email marketing and web-based push notifications, as well as an engine that attempts to identify the best timing and communication channel (e.g., SMS) to make personalized offers. The goal is to create a “system of loyalty and retention management” for both online and offline customers, Khlebinsky said, that ultimately boosts business.

“We work with ecommerce on a performance-based pricing model,” Khlebinsky explained. “In most countries, the pandemic lockdowns spiked online sales, thus we experienced a temporary revenue increase. After the lockdown ended, there was a decrease, but to levels exceeding the pre-lockdown months, because a lot of people were forced to change their buying habits towards online shoppings.”

Absent independent reviews of Retail Rocket’s platform, it’s unclear whether its approach might beat out rivals like SalesForce, SAP, Bloomreach, and Dynamic Yield. But the promise of software that predictably drives repeat business is alluring. According to HubSpot, a mere 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by 25% to 95%.

Retail Rocket has around 150 employees spread across offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Chile, and it plans to double down on mergers and purchases in the coming months. Sources close to the company tell TechCrunch that Retail Rocket has $50 million set aside for acquisitions alone.

“Retail Rocket popped on our radars thanks to their international expansion and ability to set up sales teams in Europe and Latin America,” Flintera partner Sergey Vasin said in a statement. “We were impressed with the company’s results given the limited amount of investment they raised. The company was bootstrapping its growth after the seed round. Despite that, the efficiency of Retail Rocket products surpasses those of international competitors. We expect that the global e-commerce market will continue its growth at more than 10% per annum, with Latin America leading the race.”

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OpenSea reports email security breach

Online marketplace for NFTs, OpenSea have informed their customers of an email security breach.

The news of this breach comes only months after a phishing attack that resulted in stolen NFTs. This time, the breach happened internally when an employee of OpenSea’s email vendor Customer.io misused their employee access to download & share email addresses with an unauthorized external party.

If you have shared your email with OpenSea in the past, you should assume you were impacted. OpenSea are currently working with Customer.io in their ongoing investigation, and have reported this incident to law enforcement.

Since they became a thing, NFTs have been scrutinised as unsustainable in many ways. Being vulnerable to fraud and theft is just one reoccurring issue. Marketplaces are clearly still struggling to close loopholes and ensure customers are safe. With occurrences like this, it is no surprise that data breaches are on the rise.

How Can You Protect Yourself on OpenSea?

Because the data compromise included email addresses, there may be a heightened likelihood for email phishing attempts. While safe email practices are always important, OpenSea are recommending that you follow the guidelines listed below and treat any future emails that appear to be from OpenSea carefully.

Please be aware that malicious actors may try to contact you using an email address that looks visually similar to OpenSea’s official email domain, ‘opensea.io’ (such as ‘opensea.org’ or some other variation).

Safety Recommendations:

1. Be cautious of phishing emails from addresses trying to impersonate OpenSea. OpenSea will ONLY send you emails from the domain: ‘opensea.io.’ Please do not engage with any email claiming to be from OpenSea that does not come from this email domain.
2. Never download anything from an OpenSea email. Authentic OpenSea emails do not include attachments or requests to download anything.
3. Check the URL of any page linked in an OpenSea email. OpenSea will only include hyperlinks to ‘email.opensea.io.’ URLs. Make sure that ‘opensea.io’ is spelled correctly, as it’s common for malicious actors to impersonate URLs by shuffling letters.
4. NEVER share or confirm your passwords or secret wallet phrases. OpenSea will never prompt you to do this – in any format.
5. NEVER sign a wallet transaction prompted directly from an email. OpenSea emails will never contain links which directly prompt you to sign a wallet transaction. Never sign a wallet transaction that doesn’t list the origin of https://opensea.io if you were led there by email.

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Lenskart acquires majority stake in eyewear brand Owndays in $400 million deal

India’s Lenskart is buying a majority stake in Japan’s Owndays, the two firms said, creating one of Asia’s biggest online retailers of eyewear. The firms did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, but a person familiar with the matter said the merger values 32-year business Owndays at $400 million.

The 12-year-old Bengaluru-headquartered startup is buying Owndays’ shares from L Catterton, Mitsui and Principal Investments, the two firms said. Owndays co-founders Shuji Tanaka Take Umiyama will continue to be shareholders and lead the management team at the Japanese firm.

The deal will extend the merged entity’s reach to 13 Asian markets, including India, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan, the two said.

“The way people buy eyewear is changing rapidly and at Lenskart it is our mission to drive this transformation globally. In today’s age, the customer wants great products, great prices, and delightful experiences all the time. With Owndays we move a step closer to democratizing eyewear,” said Peyush Bansal, co-founder and group chief executive of Lenskart, adding that he has known Shuji-san and Take-san for over five years.

The development comes at a time when Lenskart, backed by SoftBank and Premji Invest, is finalizing a new round of funding at over $4.5 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the matter.

Founded in 1989, Tokyo-based Owndays designs and manufactures optical eyewear. The company operates over 350 shops across Asia in locations including Japan, Singapore, Australia, India and Hong Kong. It sells over 2.5 million pairs of glasses a year.

The firm, which received backing from L Catterton Asia and Mitsui in 2018, never disclosed how much money it had raised, but it was in conversation with private equity firms Longreach and Navis Capital to sell the business, Bloomberg reported early this month.

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Black Swan analyzes social media to predict which products will be successful

Consumer packaged goods companies — think PepsiCo or Nabisco — face steep challenges from the rising cost of living and distribution. As inflation continues unabated, consumers’ disposable income isn’t going as far as it used to while products are becoming more expensive to ship. The pressure is on businesses to place their bets on the right innovations, then. That’s true during less chaotic times, but the stakes are higher at the moment.

While founded long before the pandemic, Steve King says that Black Swan Data, the data science and tech company that he helped co-launch in 2011, is well-suited to the current environment. Black Swan taps into data from conversations on social media and analyzes the data to map “growth opportunities” for companies, attempting to identify trend signals more accurately than traditional market research approaches.

Prior to co-founding Black Swan, King was a technical director at creative agency Digital Jigsaw. Black Swan’s other co-founder, Hugo Amos, was a digital marketing strategy manager at PepsiCo.

“One night in a Toronto bar, Amos and I had our ‘eureka’ moment to connect seemingly disparate data sets to predict consumer behavior,” King told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Having scribbled the idea down on the back of a beer mat (which is now hanging in the London HQ office reception area), Hugo and I returned to the U.K. to start Black Swan. We felt there had to be a better way for businesses and brands to make use of the mass of data available to them; data is largely irrelevant unless you can harness its power effectively.”

Black Swan claims to leverage published research out of Stanford, University College London, Meta and others to try to predict social trends and sales data months into the future. To conduct market research, the platform looks at billions of tweets, posts, discussion forum threads, reviews and blog posts over a two-year period and then filters for roughly 400,000 distinct concepts (e.g. “Themes,” “Ingredients,” “Brands,” “Product types,” “Benefits & needs”) in the data, for example when people discuss food that’s healthy for children to eat after school. From this, Black Swan finds the relationships between concepts to extract insights that — hopefully — help guide a company’s product development.

“Embracing AI gives users the ability to glimpse the future — using predictive algorithms to skate to where the puck is going rather than where it is today,” King said. “Black Swan is akin to the world’s largest focus group. It continuously analyses this data to map growth opportunities and identify emerging trend signals earlier, and more accurately, than traditional market research approaches. This capability is bringing a more scientific and comprehensive approach to the new product innovation process, helping brands to de-risk decision making in uncertain times when consumer behaviour is rapidly shifting.”

It’s true that product development is risky. According to one source, 95% of the more than 30,000 new products introduced every year fail. The failure rate of new grocery store products alone is estimated at between 70% to 80%.

But can AI predict success? The answer isn’t clear. Black Swan claims it can, as do startups like the similarly named Black Crow AI, which sells a service that projects which products e-commerce customers will buy, and Turing Labs, which uses AI to formulate CPG products for mass-market appeal. Just because an algorithm is accurate today, however, doesn’t guarantee that it’ll be accurate tomorrow. As the data shifts, the predictions can shift off course, in the worst case giving a false sense of security.

That’s perhaps why King is careful to note Black Swan doesn’t replace human judgement. Rather, it’s meant to help companies see product categories through the eyes of a consumer, he said, while accounting for individual tastes and preferences.

In any case, Black Swan has done quite well for itself as of late, growing its customer base to 50 companies, including PepsiCo, J&J, Kraft Heinz, SC Johnson and P&G. (PepsiCo has been open about the partnership, crediting Black Swan’s platform with its new line of Propel sports drinks infused with immunity ingredients.) Annual recurring revenue stands at $10 million, and Black Swan — which today announced that it raised $17 million — plans to expand its 170-person workforce to more than 200 by the end of the year. Among other areas of focus in the near term will be growing the startup’s U.S. market share and supporting product development, according to King.

Oxx led Black Swan’s latest funding round, with participation from AlbionVC. It brings the company’s total raised to $18.5 million.

“Black Swan was founded on a belief that brands can make better use of what people are talking about publicly online to help understand their behaviour, anticipate moments, and mold them to their advantage,” King said. “The adoption of tech-driven market-research solutions, and in particular AI-driven observational research and predictive analytics, has accelerated dramatically, and this is reflected in the growth of Black Swan … The benefit of this entire paradigm shift is that Black Swan sees the market from the consumers’ perspective and finds new and emerging trends earlier — enabling users to be more consumer-centric and stay ahead of the curve in their innovation strategies.”

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Amazon’s new physical retail analytics service gives brands insights about product and ad performance

Amazon announced today that it’s launching a new physical retail store analytics service that offer brands insights about the performance of their products, promotions and ad campaigns. The new service, Store Analytics, gives brands anonymized insights about their products in Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores in the United States that use Just Walk Out and Dash Cart technologies.

The company says the new service will give brands access to information about how their products are discovered, considered and purchased, which will then help them make informed decisions about promotions and ad campaigns. Brands will also get access to anonymized data about how their products rank and perform. The service will also provide performance metrics for in-store campaigns, such as digital signage.

On the other hand, these insights will help Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores improve the shopper experience by making the store layout easier for shoppers to find their favorite items and discover new ones. The insights will also help the stores improve the selection and availability of products. Amazon notes that the insights will also help the stores deliver relevant promotions and advertising.

Amazon stressed that the data that is collected is aggregated and anonymized, and doesn’t contain any personal information. The company says it doesn’t share anything that can be linked back to individual shoppers. The data that’s shared only includes totals, averages and percentages about product, promotion and ad campaign performance. For example, Amazon will share the percentage of how often a brand’s product was taken off the shelf and then purchased either during that store visit or later on Amazon.com.

“We never share personal information about shoppers, so the data brands receive will never include details such as their name, individual browsing data, or individual session details like the time of day they shopped or the store at which they shopped,” Amazon said in a blog post. “Further, no video or images of shoppers will be shared with brands as part of this service.”

Shoppers who don’t want the data used for Store Analytics can opt out on the company’s Store Analytics website. Shoppers who opt out can still use Just Walk Out technology and Amazon Dash Carts in Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores, the company notes.

Amazon says the data-driven Store Analytics that are provided to brands will help them to “evolve and refine their assortment, merchandising, and advertising over time.”

Amazon’s Just Walk Out Technology uses a combination of cameras, sensors, computer vision techniques and deep learning to allow customers to shop, then leave the store without waiting in line to pay. Since its launch in 2018, Just Walk Out technology is now being used at some Whole Foods, Starbucks and stadiums.

Amazon flexes its retail muscle with a brick-and-mortar clothing store

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Nautical Commerce sails away with new funding to bring marketplace tech to the masses

E-commerce marketplaces are big businesses. It was estimated that some $3.2 trillion was spent globally on the top marketplaces in 2021, with those like Taobao, Tmall and Amazon accounting for over 60% of the activity, according to research firm Digital Commerce 360.

With that number expected to grow 14% per year, Nautical Commerce wants to provide tools to retailers, B2B businesses and brands of any size so they can build their own multivendor marketplace, in as little as 90 days and without expensive custom software, to compete with the mega marketplaces.

Prior to starting the company in 2020, founder and CEO Ryan Lee was with Apple and helped them launch Apple Pay. He explained that marketplaces can take 2 to 3 years to get off the ground and multiple millions of dollars, depending on the site.

When building them, companies typically string together their tech stack with apps and software that were intended for that kind of business. And even companies with large development teams and budgets have failed at launching or scaling a marketplace.

“We bring together all the stakeholders, like vendors, sellers, drop-shippers, affiliates, channels, and influencers without needing to replatform,” Lee told TechCrunch. “This makes marketplaces a very viable decision economically because it’s now approachable. We also do it in a phased approach to de-risk the project and make sure that we have very clear milestones to deliver economic value as fast as possible.”

As we learned this week with Shop Circle’s fundraise and others, like Upgrade, Fashinza and Faire, the number of companies providing e-commerce infrastructure exploded over the past 2 years as everyone did more shopping online.

Nautical Commerce’s multivendor marketplace dashboard Image Credits: Nautical Commerce

Though Lee would not disclose revenue figures, he said Nautical grew significantly over the past 6 months, going from zero revenue “to a very specific number.” It also added new customers internationally that span industry verticals like fashion, health, automotive, home goods, sustainable goods and manufacturing.

Then came the investor interest. Earlier this year, London & Partners and Dealroom.co reported that $51 billion of venture capital was invested into U.S. digital shopping companies in 2021, up from $23 billion in 2020. Globally, that was $140 billion last year compared with $68 billion the year prior.

Nautical Commerce is also now buoyed by $30 million in a new Series A investment, and the company plans to use the funds on technology development and to expand into new markets. It will also grow its engineering, product, customer success and sales and marketing teams, planning to add at least 40 new employees over the next 18 months.

The round, which gives the company about $33.2 million in total funding, was led by Drive Capital, with participation from Accomplice Ventures and Golden Ventures.

Next up, the company will continue onboarding the pipeline of about 30 new marketplaces and creating awareness in industries that Nautical wants to focus on and help digitize, Lee said.

As part of the investment, Drive’s Masha Khusid joins the Nautical board of directors.

“E-commerce is becoming more distributed and single-vendor platforms were not built for this multi-vendor future,” Khusid said in a statement. “Ryan and his team built the only multi-vendor e-commerce platform and are serving a huge need in the market. We’re impressed by what Nautical has already accomplished and are proud to enable them to deliver on their mission to democratize marketplace technology.”

4 strategies for setting marketplace take rates

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Your data has probably been breached more than once

The UK has been named the 7th most breached country globally and Cybersecurity firm Surfshark have found that the average brit has likely had their data breached around 4 times. Eek.

The findings are equally interesting and scary and will probably make you want to go and change a few passwords. In total 247.1M British accounts have been breached since 2004, the year when breaches became widespread. The most affected data type after email addresses in the UK is password (205M), endangering 80% of leaked email addresses. This means that there is a high likelihood that a particular username was grouped with a password, giving criminals direct access to social media profiles or other online services.

“Statistically speaking, a single Brit has had around 4 instances in which they were victims of data breaches. Europe accounts for 30% of all global breaches, and while half of these happen in Russia, the UK also happens to have exceptionally high breach rates. Considering that most European countries have robust cybersecurity measures in place, this comes as a surprise and calls for better personal data storing and management practices.”

-Agneska Sablovskaja, Data Researcher, Surfshark

Breached data is a global issue

Data breaches are unfortunately a global issue with the top three most breached countries being the US (2.3B breached users), Russia (2.2B), and China (987M).

The top five European countries with the most breaches in descending order are Russia (2.2B breached users), Germany (426.7M), France (395.1M), UK (247.1M) and Italy (239.8M).

The number of global breaches are rising again. In Q1 of 2022, 304 accounts were being breached every minute. In the present quarter, however, breach rates are 6.7% higher. On a positive note, the trend in the UK is the opposite. Breach rate is 34.3% lower now than it was in Q1, falling from around 3 to 2 breached accounts per minute.

For business owners it is especially important that data is protected. It’s a good idea to pay more attention to how you are securing your data online such as using strong passwords and updating account information regularly.

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Patrick Nommensen, TikTok, Live eCommerce Q&A

Patrick Nommensen, Senior Director of eCommerce Operations at TikTok, will be speaking at ChannelX world in October and in his keynote he’ll be discussing the new ways of shopping and why it’s vital that retailers engage audiences in the ways they wish to shop.

Last week, TikTok launched their Live eCommerce summer sale and and for the first time will be using gamification as part of a live sale event. We asked Patrick to tell us share his top tips for getting started wtih Live eCommercel

Register to attend ChannelX World to book your seat at Patrick Nommensen’s keynote and read our Q&A with Patrick below for a flavour of what to expect:

Q&A With Patrick Nommensen

Can any product go viral – is it the product or the marketing?

Any product can go viral on TikTok. While it certainly doesn’t hurt to have an outstanding product, what really matters on TikTok is engaging, authentic and relatable content. The most successful shopping videos on TikTok are the ones that feel native to the platform. They’re also entertaining – 75% of people come to TikTok to be entertained.

That’s why collaborating with creators can play such an integral role in creating shopping experiences that people will love. @Amelia0livia is one of our top beauty creators who has built a captive audience of over 800k followers, enthralled by her make-up tutorials and transformations. She’s had huge success for both her live shopping events and on TikTok Shop, selling her top recommendations through her videos. She’s already worked with a number of brands, including Paula’s Choice and Lookfantastic, and helped them reach a new audience of consumers on TikTok.

What are the pre-requisites for getting started with LIVE eCcommerce?

We’ve created a Seller Knowledge Hub full of helpful tips and advice on how to get started on TikTok Shop. Sellers can set themselves up as either an Individual Seller or Corporate Seller, which requires different documentation. It then goes through our verification process which usually takes only a few days before sellers are all ready to go start listing on TikTok Shop – new merchants can sign up here.

Are there different strategies for well-known brands compared to independent brands?

Strategies may vary depending on a brand’s commercial objectives. For newcomers, TikTok Shop is a way of putting their products on the map, while for larger brands, it may be more about challenging misconceptions or getting their products into the hands of a new audience of consumers.

A lot of the same principles for selling on TikTok still apply though – TikTok is an entertainment platform first and foremost which means that the way brands exhibit and promote their products on TikTok Shop should be as entertaining as your favourite cat video. We always encourage sellers to adopt a ‘TikTok-first’ mindset – thinking about how they can create bespoke content that feels native to the platform. We’ve seen that this usually gives sellers the best opportunity to succeed on TikTok Shop. One great example is Solve Collectibles, a football trading card business founded by Luke Ambler in August 2020. He launched a TikTok Shop account and began creating fun and light-hearted content that quickly went viral. He saw an immediate impact, with sales from his website increasing 400% by January 2021 and he now has over 673,000 followers enjoying his content on TikTok.

What are your top tips for selecting an influencer?

Creators play a vital role in the success of community commerce: they can boost product discovery, educate and inform and inspire their audiences to try new products. Here are a few tips to help sellers choose the right creator for them:

• Collaborate with a creator who is genuinely passionate about your product – TikTok is all about authenticity and our Community will be able to easily spot if a creator doesn’t fit with a product.
• Make sure the creator appeals to the audience you’re trying to reach – creators will be able to give you a good understanding about the demographics of people who follow their accounts and engage with their content.
• Don’t always assume the creator with the biggest followers is right for you – some creators may have a smaller, but more loyal following, so make sure to look at a number of different metrics, and not just raw follower count.
• Finally, our TikTok shop team is here to help and are more than happy to help sellers connect with talented TikTok creators.

You are presenting at ChannelX World in October, what can retailers expect to learn?

How to get the most out of TikTok Shop and where we see the future of Community Commerce going. I know that for some sellers this will be a whole new frontier, collaborating with creators and selling during live events, so I’m hoping to demystify all of that and help merchants both small and large tap into this new way of shopping.

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Arzooo raises $70 million to bring ‘best of e-commerce’ to physical stores in India

Arzooo, an Indian startup that is attempting to bring the “best of e-commerce” to physical retail shops, has raised $70 million in a new financing round as it looks to scale its platform to more cities.

SBI Investment and Trifecta Leaders Fund led the Bengaluru-headquartered startup’s Series B funding. Tony Xu, founder of Doordash, Celesta Capital and 3 Lines VC also invested in the new round.

Millions of retail stores in India are struggling to compete with larger retail chains and e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart because they don’t offer a wide selection of items and they are not able to provide customers with best prices.

Founded by two former Flipkart alums, Arzooo is attempting to solve this by working with big brands to secure large inventories and selling them to retail stores at better prices. The four-year-old startup also provides these businesses with working capital, giving them up to $25,300 in revolving credit.

The startup, which currently operates in consumer durables and electronics category and provides stores with access to over 10,000 different products, says it works with over 30,000 retail stores in India.

“The consumers who have been walking in and walking out of these stores because of the pricing, we are able to help address it,” said Khushnud Khan, co-founder and chief executive of Arzooo, in an interview.

“These are the stores that fall in the lowest slab of the value chain. They don’t have access to as good margin chain as say Reliance Retail and Croma and Amazon. They are getting sandwiched between the two,” he explained.

This is a developing story. More to follow…

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TechCrunch+ roundup: CEO pregnancy checklist, decision-tree planning, reassessing valuations

Property technology has radically impacted the way we live and travel, but the real estate industry has successfully resisted most attempts to innovate.

Prospective homeowners can qualify for mortgages from their mobile phones, but until there are more companies to help them find affordable housing or adequately plan for the largest purchase they’ll ever make, proptech can’t create optimal value for consumers.

After the success of startups like Airbnb and smart-home players like Google, Amazon and Samsung, investors are “searching for good ideas and quality execution,” according to Jake Fingert and Lionel Foster of VC firm Camber Creek.

“Starting a business is hard, but we now have a path for proptech lined with funders and advisers that can propel entrepreneurs over early obstacles through to maturity and deep market penetration.”

---

Buy a TechCrunch+ membership before July 4, 2022 and save 50% on an annual subscription.

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In an article they describe as “a call to current and would-be proptech entrepreneurs to solve the problems that are close to home,” the authors identify eight issues founders and investors should focus on, along with the estimated TAM for each opportunity.

“What you want as an entrepreneur is funders nodding in agreement with your pitch before you even have a chance to finish it,” write Fingert and Foster.

Since housing accounts for as much as 18% of the U.S. economy, “these are problems that everyone can understand. More entrepreneurs should call proptech home.”

Thanks very much for reading,

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

Proptech still has fundamental problems for entrepreneurs to solve

How I navigated my pregnancy as a Series A founder

Image Credits: JESPER KLAUSEN / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

When Kelsey Mellard, founder and CEO of telehealth platform Sitka, realized she was pregnant a few weeks after raising a $14 million Series A, she was faced with several decisions.

How would she break the news to her leadership team and employees? What was the best way to plan her transition to maternity leave?

“While the experience wildly varies and there is no ‘correct’ path to take, I want to share what worked for me while I was a pregnant founder and CEO,” says Mellard, who shared her pre-leave checklist and transition plan with TechCrunch+.

“My investors had chosen to bet on me,” she writes. “So now, me having a baby was going to become part of our new game plan, and they understood that.”

How I navigated my pregnancy as a Series A founder

Use chronological scenario planning to help your startup get through a potential recession

Image Credits: Andriy Onufriyenko (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

People who burn wood to keep warm through the winter know how to calculate how many cords they’ll need to chop and stack. Creating a winterization strategy for a startup is a less straightforward process, however.

In this environment, entrepreneurs should build decision trees that can help them manage 36 months of runway, recommends Gaetano Crupi, partner at venture capital firm Prime Movers Lab.

A three-year outlook “is a more appropriate time horizon for collecting more information so you can decelerate even further (with cash to pivot) if things are worse in 12 months, or accelerate if things are better in 18 months,” he advises.

Use chronological scenario planning to help your startup get through a potential recession

Astrix Astronautics’ Fia Jones on wooing Peter Beck to launch her startup

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

In 2019, Fia Jones reached out to Peter Beck, CEO and founder of Rocket Lab, with an invitation to discuss her idea for revolutionizing the way we power satellites. At the time, she was a 19-year-old physics student at the University of Auckland.

Last month, Rocket Lab brought a cubesat created by Astrix Astronautics, the company Jones co-founded, into space.

Once deployed, the unit will capture 200 watts of power that can provide inexpensive power for constellation satellites.

“For other founders, I’m not saying they should chase down another CEO in their industry. But I think it can help to have an expert in the field, or someone who has credibility and clout, to back them up,” says Jones.

Astrix Astronautics’ Fia Jones on wooing Peter Beck to launch her startup

Right-size your tech stack to withstand the downturn

Image Credits: Aguus (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Reducing headcount is often the first place founders look for savings, but it can’t hurt to take a closer look at your tech stack.

Early-stage startups don’t have a formal purchasing process, which means companies growing at scale are left paying for unused software licenses or automatically renewing contracts locked in at high rates.

“The question is not whether there is waste or inefficiency, but rather how much,” says David Campbell, CEO and co-founder of Tropic. In this article, he shares three ways to assess startup software spending.

Right-size your tech stack to withstand the downturn

VCs shouldn’t confuse risk management with not funding diverse founders

Image Credits: Nuthawut Somsuk (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

In 2021, Black entrepreneurs received a record amount of venture capital, but since the downturn began, they’ve seen a significant drop-off, found TechCrunch reporter Dominic-Madori Davis.

Investors flowed $1.2 billion to Black founders in Q1 2022, but funding is at just $324 million so far this quarter.

“Our allies and communities need to be part of the solution by investing in our companies or becoming paying clients,” says Kerry Schrader, co-founder of Mixtroz. “Clapping from the sidelines only goes so far.”

VCs shouldn’t confuse risk management with not funding diverse founders

Late-stage tech companies must do right by their employees: Reassess your 409A valuations

Image Credits: William Voon / EyeEm (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Growing valuations are the ultimate goal for companies of all stripes, but for startups planning to endure a period of financial drought, lower valuations could make it easier to hire and retain employees.

“Reevaluating your 409A now is actually the right thing to do for your employees, because their equity isn’t up to date with the rest of the market,” says Frederik Mijnhardt, CEO of Secfi.

Late-stage tech companies must do right by their employees: Reassess your 409A valuations

Your startup pitch deck needs an operating plan

Image Credits: Haje Jan Kamps (opens in a new window)

Including an operating plan in a pitch deck shows prospective investors that the founding team has a clear idea of how they will spend any monies received, suggests Haje Jan Kamps.

“For most companies, you should include major milestones: product launches, partnerships signed, and major product revisions shipped, along with other key performance indicators that show traction.”

Your startup pitch deck needs an operating plan

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Amazon reportedly plans to hold a second Prime shopping event in the fall

Amazon is reportedly planning to hold two Prime shopping events this year, according to a report from Business Insider. The online retailer already revealed the July dates for its Prime Day shopping event, and is said to be planning to hold a second shopping event for Prime members in the fall. The second event would mark the first time that the company will hold two Prime Day-like events in the same year.

The second event is reportedly called the “Prime Fall Deal Event,” according to a message sent to sellers that was obtained by Insider. The report says Amazon has started asking sellers to submit special promotion deals for the event. Insider also reports that the shopping event is expected to feature promotions for TVs, sneakers and other items. Although the exact date for the event is unclear, the report indicates that it may be scheduled to take place in October.

By adding a second Prime Day-like event in a single year, Amazon could boost sales and possibly attract more subscribers to its Prime offering. The company hasn’t had the greatest year so far, reporting a $3.84 billion loss in its first-quarter results, so it may be looking to use the second event as a way to boost revenue.

When asked for comment, an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company doesn’t have anything to share, noting that it doesn’t comment on speculation.

Amazon recently revealed that its annual Prime Day event will take place on July 12-13th in the United States. The company will also be holding Prime Day on the same day in at least 15 other countries, including Canada, China, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands and the U.K. Prime Day sales will run in India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and some other markets later this summer.

Amazon Prime Day lands on July 12-13

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Shop Circle wants to keep Shopify merchants from going ‘round and ‘round finding apps they need

The global pandemic ushered in new consumer behavior of shopping online, giving a boost to a U.S. retail e-commerce industry likely to reach $1 trillion by the end of this year. E-commerce marketplaces, like giants Amazon and Shopify, support millions of merchants, which is helping the industry reach that valuation.

Behind some of Shopify merchants’ tech stack is London-based Shop Circle, a technology company that acquires and grows e-commerce software. They often have to sift through over 7,500 different apps on Shopify’s platform to find the ones that work best for them — and shelling out associated costs until they find the right one.

Shop Circle is streamlining those efforts by creating a one-stop shop for what it considers to be the “best-of-the-best” apps, aimed at reducing all that searching, thus increasing the speed at which merchants can get up and running.

The company was co-founded in 2021 by Luca Cartechini and Gian Maria Gramondi. The pair met in college and were doing their own thing — Cartechini in investment banking and Gramondi working with friends at a startup — but continued to discuss how much Amazon’s aggregator space was dominating the industry.

“We knew that we didn’t want to do that, but we had high confidence in software as a business model,” Cartechini told TechCrunch. “We wanted to be the ‘Microsoft for e-commerce merchants.’ We want every merchant selling online to use our tools to run and superpower their stores.”

The company has about 15 different categories of software. It has acquired six apps already and is working on another 20, Gramondi said. Cartechini, CEO, considers Shop Circle to be competing with the likes of Magento and PrestaShop, though he notes his company’s difference is that it is acquiring software rather than brands.

Shop Circle’s order tagger app Image Credits: Shop Circle

It started with Shopify and went from zero users to now about 50,000 merchants over the past year. Earlier this month, the company closed on a third round of funding to drive its long-term goal to go beyond Shopify and take its tools across all e-commerce marketplaces.

The new funding gives the company a total of $65 million in committed investments over the past year. Cartechini broke the total down into three rounds but didn’t disclose amounts. He considers the newest one similar to a Series A.

NFX and QED Investors each led a round of funding among the total investment and were joined by 645 Ventures and Firstminute Capital. There was also some venture debt mixed in, and TriplePoint Capital provided that.

Prior to this announcement, Shop Circle had been under the radar for the most part, Cartechini said.

“We were in stealth mode until now because the market has been so reactive,” he added. “We enjoy the same competitive advantage with Thrasio, so we wanted to keep it like this for as long as possible. It’s a bit hard to hire people during this stage and to convince other partners to create partnerships together. At the same time, it’s fun to build in silence without too much disruption. Now it is time to come out of stealth.”

Now the company is ready to be more present as it acquires more e-commerce apps into its portfolio — 20 per month according to Gramondi’s estimate — and more users. He estimates there are 2 million merchants just on Shopify, so the opportunity is big. The company also plans to double its headcount from 50 to 100.

4 trends that will define e-commerce in 2022

Though there has been some consolidation within the e-commerce tools space, Gramondi noted there is a lot of focus on data doubling down in the space to support new product development and the ability for Shop Circle to launch additional features.

Meanwhile, having NFX and QED on Shop Circle’s cap table was “a natural match” for the company, Cartechini said. He explained that both of them were “the best” when it came to marketplace and commerce, and he liked that both firms were led by operators, not just consultants, but those that have built a company from scratch.

Pete Flint, general partner at NFX, reciprocated that appeal, telling TechCrunch that his firm had been innovating in e-commerce infrastructure all over the world in the past several years. During that time, he saw massive growth in global e-commerce, and with it the proliferation of tool sets needed to service all of these merchants.

While marketplaces like Amazon and Shopify are providing some of the infrastructure, Flint saw Shop Circle as a complimentary platform to fill out other elements of the tool sets and build e-commerce tools. He believes the tool set today is still in its infancy just as the e-commerce industry is, and there is opportunity to build out all sorts of tools for different types of merchants and do it globally.

“I’ve seen some really strong success in the companies and growth that we backed in other markets,” he added. “What we saw with Gian and Luca and their particular model was a unique blend of software skills and product skills combined with a sophistication to strike the right structure for entrepreneurs.”

New data underscores a slowing e-commerce market

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Investments in UK Women-led businesses grow

A new report on The Investing in Women Code an initiative set up to help boost female entrepreneurship has revealed the growing strength of investment in the UK’s women-led businesses.

The Investing in Women Code is an initiative recommended by the government-commissioned Rose Review, led by NatWest CEO Alison Rose. The code sets out commitments to support the advancement of women entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom by improving their access to the tools, resources and finance they need to achieve their goals.

Signatories to the code include Angel investment groups, venture and growth investors and High Street banks including Barclays, NatWest and Santander.

Growing the economy is the long-term way of addressing the cost of living and up to £250 billion could be added to the economy if we break the barriers to women starting and scaling new businesses at the same rate as men.

– Paul Scully, Small Business Minister

The report is the second-ever annual report on the code and key findings include:

• in 2021, 34% of venture capital deals made by code signatories were in companies with at least one female founder, compared to an industry average of 24%
• in 2021, the average amount of Angel (early-stage) investment being sought by all-female teams (£791k) was very similar to all-male teams (£823k). This is a significant and encouraging change from 2020, when all-female teams requested less than 50% of the amounts requested by male-only teams
• the number of code signatories has now reached 160, with a notable increase in the number of venture and growth capital firms joining, accounting for 34 of the 53 new signatories in the year to 31 March 2022

While there is more work to be done, the code is gaining recognition worldwide. A partnership between 14 countries including Australia, Canada and China, the World Bank and 6 regional development banks is planning to draw on the UK’s experience to create a ‘Women Entrepreneurs Finance Code’ to help the 400 million women-led businesses around the world.

The post Investments in UK Women-led businesses grow appeared first on ChannelX - formerly Tamebay.

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Quadient to roll out parcel lockers in the UK

U.S. based parcel locker provider Quadient have announced new plans to begin rolling out their carrier-agnostic parcel lockers in the UK. The news comes after finding success in the United States and Japan.

Over the coming years, the company aim to have 5,000 lockers installed in various locations across the country offering convenient parcel pickup and drop-off locations and an exceptional shopping experience to customers.

Quadient teams have ensured technical integration with the systems of key carriers in the UK and have secured hundreds of prime locations for locker units to quickly scale. Quadient’s ambition is to establish a dense, large and scalable network to consolidate first and last mile deliveries, especially in urban areas where there is medium to high delivery density. Having readily available open access to a large parcel delivery network alleviates the mounting pressure experienced by carriers and retailers to scale to increasing demand and parcel volumes.

We believe that building and growing a large, dense, and open intelligent locker network with an agnostic approach is the best way forward to address the challenges of large and growing e-commerce markets such as the UK, the third largest global e-commerce market. Our approach is to offer a common infrastructure available to any carrier or retailer for a volume-based fee, ensuring it is financially viable for all parties. Building upon our extensive experience managing large open networks, particularly in Japan, we are confident that customer adoption and usage will increase rapidly as we work with our partners to grow our footprint, enabling us to deliver the service in a profitable and sustainable manner.

– Geoffrey Godet, chief executive officer, Quadient

Parcel lockers are one solution being used tackle the pressures faced by ecommerce. They are particularly helpful for returns, where many businesses are still facing a range of problems. It is vital that businesses can offer customers options that elevate some of these challenges and boost trust and brand reliability.

By the end of this year, Quadient will have installed 500 parcel lockers available to all UK carriers and retailers.

The post Quadient to roll out parcel lockers in the UK appeared first on ChannelX - formerly Tamebay.

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TechCrunch+ roundup: Non-dilutive biotech capital, long-term angel investing, WayRay’s $80M pitch deck

As a veteran startup worker who has been laid off during economic downturns, it’s dissonant to hear investors say this is a good time to launch a software company.

They’re not wrong, however.

An analogy: In California, nearly 10,000 wildfires burned more than 4 million acres two years ago, causing billions of economic damage and forcing thousands of residents to uproot their entire lives.

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In the years since, that deadly disaster has started reshaping local ecosystems by clearing out dead and diseased trees and reducing competition for resources like water and sunlight.

According to Kyle Poyar, a partner at OpenView, the current downturn is creating similar opportunities for SaaS startups.

“Folks who’ve been laid off or have woken up to realize their stock options are suddenly worthless will opt to bet on themselves,” he says. “They’ll finally take a chance turning that nagging idea into an actual product.”

In his latest TechCrunch+ post, Poyar identifies six principles for product-led growth in what he calls “the Age of Connected Work,” where API-based products are “discovered and championed by users, not just executives and managers.”

Thanks very much for reading,

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

OpenView’s Kyle Poyar shares how to build a standout software company in the 2020s

Twitter Space: M13 Managing Partner Karl Alomar discusses fundraising during a downturn

Image Credits: dblight (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

On Monday, June 27 at 11:30 a.m. PT/2:30 p.m. ET, M13 Managing Partner Karl Alomar will join me on a Twitter Space to share his advice for fundraising during a downturn.

Alomar, who led startups through the dotcom bust of 2000 and the Great Recession of 2008, will talk about whether investors are still prioritizing growth over profits, and identify which proof points founding teams must define before their next raise.

We’ll take your questions, so please follow @techcrunch on Twitter and set a reminder for Monday’s chat.

Long-term angel investing: Understanding capital requirements and how to find quality investments

Image Credits: OsakaWayne Studios / Getty Images

Helping a small company find its momentum and grow to capture market share while making money has the ring of a great job description.

But there’s a reason successful angel investors are few and far between: returns may take several years to materialize, and not all companies you want to invest in will want your money.

It’s important for new investors to realize that angel investing is a capital-intensive process that may not always work out, according to Adam Nash, the CEO of Daffy.

“Most see the incredible results from anecdotes about amazing angel investments and assume that angel investing is always massively better than more common asset classes like public equities, bonds and real estate. But the truth is that, on average, the risk-adjusted returns for angel investing can often be worse than traditional investments,” he writes.

Long-term angel investing: Understanding capital requirements and how to find quality investments

3 tips for biotech startups seeking non-dilutive capital to weather the downturn

Image Credits: Martin Poole (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

This is a particularly difficult time for life sciences startups. Even if their tech is world-changing, it will still be years before it comes to market.

Most biotech founders who are looking to raise in this environment assume that dilutive capital is their only option, but that’s short-sighted, writes James Coates, Health and Human Performance principal at Decisive Point.

“In a downturn, non-dilutive grants or contracts from the government should be seen as more appealing than ever, because they provide runway without dilution and make for great headlines.”

3 tips for biotech startups seeking non-dilutive capital to weather the downturn

Pitch Deck Teardown: WayRay’s $80M Series C deck

Image Credits: WayRay (opens in a new window)

Many founders start by building a 10-slide pitch deck, but AR car hardware company WayRay’s Series C presentation contained 75 slides.

More may not always be better, but considering that the deck helped WayRay nab $80 million, the company’s founders have shared it in its entirety with TC+ members.

“WayRay does a great job at showing off the world it wants to live in,” writes Haje Jan Kamps.

Pitch Deck Teardown: WayRay’s $80M Series C deck

Dear Sophie: What are my F-1 OPT options if my crypto job is no longer available?

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Dear Sophie,

I’m an F-1 student who graduated this month with my bachelor’s in computer science. I received work authorization under OPT and had a job lined up with a crypto company, but they rescinded my job offer.

Do I need to let my DSO know that my job offer was rescinded? What are my options, especially if I want to create my own web3 startup?

How long can I stay in the U.S. without a job? Thanks in advance for your help!

— Gallant Grad

Dear Sophie: What are my F-1 OPT options if my crypto job is no longer available?

Time-tested tactics for building investor presentations

Image Credits: Constantine Johnny (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

It’s common to hear that you need a bullet-proof pitch deck if you want to raise capital, but the true purpose of a pitch deck isn’t actually to raise money.

In fact, the best practical result of a good investor presentation is “a follow-up meeting with a sense of momentum and clarity about the company’s story, its current situation, goals and opportunities,” says Lev Kerzhner, head of Saragus Agency.

In an illuminating post, Kerzhner explains the different kinds of investor presentations you should build, and outlines a slew of tips and tricks to craft and package a killer investor presentation.

Time-tested tactics for building investor presentations

To drive more sales, use shopper-generated content to personalize emails

Image Credits: alphaspirit (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Consumer confidence takes a hit during an economic downturn, which is why e-commerce startups should start looking now for new ways to engage customers.

Cynthia Price, SVP of marketing at Litmus, shares several ways companies can turn customer purchasing data into content that improves brand experiences — and makes users more likely to buy.

For example, the most-viewed products on your site reflect your most active customers’ tastes and interests, which means it’s also useful information that you can showcase in outbound emails.

“You can even break down that data more granularly by layering shopper data,” writes Price. “This strategy sparks interest, attracts more subscribers to your site and improves the purchase potential of their products.”

To drive more sales, use shopper-generated content to personalize emails

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