Mavenoid, which automates technical support and onboarding for hardware companies, raises $30M

Mavenoid, a Swedish company that provides both human- and AI-enabled support and troubleshooting tools for hardware companies, has raised $30 million in a series B round of funding.

Founded out of Stockholm in 2017, Mavenoid works with hardware and consumer electronics companies including HP, Husqvarna, and Jabra, serving to automate technical support and onboarding for customers spanning everything from printers and ovens, to electric scooters and industrial equipment.

Providing technical support for physical products comes with a host of unique problems — problems that can’t be solved by screen-sharing or other solutions borrowed from the software sphere.

Ordinarily, someone having problems with a new dishwasher or coffee maker, for example, would either have to return their product to the store they bought it, or the company would have to dispatch a field-service agent to physically inspect the item — but Mavenoid adopts a dual AI-guided self-service approach, and agent-assisted live video support, to circumvent these costs. 

“The way that you address physical product issues, and the tools you need to be successful, are actually quite different from how you would address software or service issues,” Mavenoid cofounder and CEO Shahan Lilja explained to TechCrunch. “We believe it’s better to have the right tools for the job, rather than trying to use generic solutions for specific problems. Hardware issues are repetitive, difficult, and time-consuming to fix. By automating a significant portion of these repetitive — but often complex — support requests, companies can save on costs by reducing overhead and allocating resources elsewhere in the organization.”

Technical support

With live support, Mavenoid gives companies access to interactive video tools, whereby a customer connects directly with a human agent.

Mavenoid: One-click video

The agent asks the customer to point their smartphone camera at the product, and the agent can zoom in and draw on the screen to illustrate which component needs to be addressed, and share links to guides on how to solve the problem.

Mavenoid: Illustrating fixes

On the AI-guided self-service side, meanwhile, Mavenoid helps companies compile their technical documentation, FAQs, and how-to guides into a format that’s easy to access and query via a chatbot-style interface.

Mavenoid chatbot

To do this, Mavenoid combines Open AI’s GPT-3 language model and proprietary algorithms to create what it calls “high-quality support models.”

This essentially means that Mavenoid takes care of all the content-scraping (documentation, manuals, FAQs, etc), and optimizes the knowledge base structure specifically for automated hardware support. This is designed for more complex questions that traditional bot-builders would likely struggle with, and follows a non-linear model that considers the specificities of the problem while using natural language understanding (NLU) to identify the real intent behind a user’s support request.

In short, Mavenoid promises to truly understand a query, rather than simply finding and matching keywords. This increases the chances of finding a resolution to the problem, rather than simply deflecting queries and complaints away from customer support teams.

“Deflection often means that customers don’t get the help they need, and come back more angry than before — ultimately costing companies more in the long run, as they still have to respond to the query, but have hurt customer satisfaction and loyalty,” Lilia said.

It’s also worth noting that at the end of a human-led live support session, agents can suggest feedback that can be incorporated into Mavenoid’s machine learning models to improve the self-service product in the future.

“Over time, Mavenoid’s AI will learn from the implemented suggestions, as it does from all conversations, to improve the automation ability of the self-service assistant,” Lilja added.

In terms of deployment, companies can embed the Mavenoid engine into any website or application by copy and pasting a short piece of code. Then, they can publish links to their product assistants in emails, customer support tickets, social networks, and even QR codes — for example, a company might place a QR code sticker on a product, which directs a customer to a self-service setup guide.

Mavenoid can also integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) software, ticketing systems, ecommerce stores, knowledge bases, and more.

All change

Much has changed at Mavenoid since its $8 million series A round more than two years ago, with a new interface and myriad new features such as AI Retrieval, which enables companies to transform their product documentation into snippets of relevant answers that can be indexed and searched through the Mavenoid self-service product assistant — it’s a little like how Google surfaces answers to specific questions directly in search results.

Mavenoid: AI Retrieval

On top of that, Mavenoid has expanded into more than 50 languages and introduced a slew of third-party integrations including with Salesforce, Zendesk, Shopify, Zapier, and more.

Mavenoid had previously raised around $10 million, and with another $30 million in the bank, the company said that it plans to double down on its AI and product development, as well as scale its technology globally.

Mavenoid’s series B round was led by Smedvig Capital, with participation from Creandum, Mosaic, Point Nine Capital, NordicNinja and ABB Technology Ventures.

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Meta launch first End-to-End Shopping Experience on WhatsApp in India

Meta have launched the first end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp in India, allowing consumers to shop with JioMart on the app. Could this partnership be a sign of things to come for retailers across other markets?

The new partnership with JioMart will let Indian consumers add products to their cart and pay to complete purchases, all within WhatsApp. It is the first time Meta have enabled End-to-End Shopping on the messaging platform and could hint at the new route they are taking to explore a more successful shot at ecommerce.

This is an important stepping stone for India’s leading digital economy as it provides consumers and retailers with a new way to connect seamlessly. The launch of this service on WhatsApp in India is part of a strategic partnership between Meta and Jio Platforms to accelerate India’s digital transformation and provide people and businesses of all sizes opportunities to come together in new ways, fueling economic growth in the country. Although this partnership is currently limited to India, retailers should keep an eye on the potential, if successful for it to move into other markets.

People in India can start shopping on JioMart via WhatsApp by simply sending ‘Hi’ to the JioMart number on WhatsApp.

Our vision is to propel India as the world’s leading digital society. When Jio platforms and Meta announced our partnership in 2020, Mark and I shared a vision of bringing more people and businesses online and creating truly innovative solutions that will add convenience to the daily lives of every Indian. One example of an innovative customer experience that we are proud of developing is the first ever end-to-end shopping experience with JioMart on WhatsApp. The JioMart on WhatsApp experience furthers our commitment of enabling a simple and convenient way of online shopping to millions of Indians.

– Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries

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Peter Thiel backs electronics marketplace PriceOye in maiden Pakistan investment

A Pakistani startup, which has taken inspiration from China’s JD.com and India’s Flipkart to build a managed marketplace of electronics products, said on Tuesday it has raised seed funding from scores of investors including PayPal founder Peter Thiel.

Launched in March 2020 — just two weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the world — the Islamabad-based startup PriceOye offers a range of electronics products, including smartphones, TVs and home appliances.

Its seed funding round was led by JAM Fund, a venture capital firm by Tinder founder Justin Mateen. The institutional funding round also included participation of Beenext, DG Daiwa, Mantis VC, HOF Capital, Jet.com investor Palm Drive Capital and Atlas Ventures, among others. Angels including Thiel, Immad Akhud of Mercury Bank, and Asif Keshodia of Souq also participated in the round — alongside previous investors Fatima Gobi Ventures, SOSV, and Artistic Ventures. This is Thiel’s maiden investment in Pakistan.

PriceOye has served 45 million unique users in Pakistan in the last two years, covering 37.5% of the country’s total internet userbase, Adnan Shaffi, co-founder and CEO of the startup, told TechCrunch in an interview.

“We are the second most visited shopping website in the entire country, with over two and a half million monthly active users coming on the platform, doing research using our product recommendation engine, and then getting to know about different products,” he said.

After exiting two startups, Adan and his brother Adeel Shaffi got the idea of launching PriceOye when they were doing “a lot of island hopping” in Southeast Asia. The duo looked at several startups in Indonesia and India and found the Asian markets were seeing similar consumer internet trends play out — just at a different pace. They built a thesis that Pakistan will see similar adoption of consumer internet services in the next four to five years.

That’s the genesis of PriceOye.

The duo decided to go with the managed marketplace model, where only brands and their official representatives are allowed to sell products, to limit the instances of common frauds and errors that have proven to be painful to traditional online marketplaces, Adnan said.

“We realized that in a market, where trust is one of the biggest factors, and there’s a lot of trust deficit between the consumer and the brand, the only way a marketplace can work is the managed marketplace model, which originally started out of China from JD.com, then replicated by Flipkart, and a lot of other players in Southeast Asia,” Adnan said.

PriceOye sees 30% repeat users of its entire customer base who visit the platform regularly to purchase consumer electronics goods. The startup also claims to sell four smartphones to a single user per year on an average.

It is the largest online platform for selling mobile phones and accessories in Pakistan, claimed Adnan, adding that 35% of its overall orders come from tier-two and tier-three cities across the country.

“Within a short period of time, PriceOye has grown exponentially and has cemented its position as the leading national company in online consumer electronics. We are excited to join PriceOye in its mission towards changing the way people shop in Pakistan,” said Mantis VC founder and partner Alex Pall, in a prepared statement.

PriceOye is looking to deploy the fresh funding to expand its 97-member team by hiring new talent. It’s also planning to bring its platform closer to people in the country by starting offline experience centers — beginning with three centers in high-end shopping malls across Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore. More new products and categories are also in the pipeline for the eponymous platform.

Before the latest round, PriceOye had raised $450,000 in pre-seed funding from Fatima Gobi Ventures, Artistic Ventures and SOSV.

“It’s always a difficult choice for consumers to spend big amounts of money on high-value products while being unsure about their authenticity. I was inspired by the vision of PriceOye founders Adnan and Adeel of creating transparency and bringing convenience to customers when it comes to shopping for consumer electronics,” said Seamon Chan, managing partner of Palm Drive Capital, in a statement.

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Does venture capital need a shot in the arm?

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

This week Alex was back with Grace and our new producer Theresa Loconsolo to kick off the week. This Monday morning we recorded right before Garry Tan announced that he was heading back to Y Combinator as its President. Dang.

But we still had a good sheaf of things to talk about!

• Stocks are not having a good day around the world, after having a pretty tough last Friday. It’s hardly bullish for the IPO market.
• Things weren’t much better in crypto-land, where bitcoin and ether are off from their week-ago prices, and NFT volumes remain muted.
• And speaking of quiet, startup news — Y Combinator apart! — was modest over the weekend. It appears that the August slowdown is both real, and here. Frankly startups could use a shot in the arm to get venture back closer to 2021’s level of insanity. Can the Instacart IPO that we expect be the needed catalyst?
• Another potential catalyst of Good Vibes that we are tracking is whether, and when Tether’s audit finally does happen.
• Also in the news: Honda is going to spend big to build batteries in the United States; Indian mobile connectivity is set to improve in the next year; and Meta and Indian conglomerate Reliance are teaming up for ecommerce.

Equity is back Wednesday Thursday for a live show! Chat soon!

Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

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Avalara partners with Xero to automate sales tax for SMBs

Avalara have announced a new partnership with Xero that lets accountants, bookkeepers, and small businesses automate sales tax.

The new partnership will bring advanced sales tax workflows and management directly into the Xero platform, enabling advisors and business owners to automate sales tax calculations, reporting, and filing.

We know people don’t start their small business to be buried in tricky admin. Our new partnership with the experts at Avalara, we can automate compliance work and give small businesses and their advisors a simple, efficient, and beautiful experience to meet their tax obligations so they can focus on growing their business.

– Anna Curzon, chief product officer at Xero 

Recent research found that small businesses with up to five employees spend an average of 163 hours or $17,672 each month on sales tax compliance.  The partnership will allow Avalara and Xero to build an integration solution that automates the sales tax compliance journey from within the Xero platform, which allows accountants and small businesses to more easily manage sales tax calculation and reporting.

Looking forward, accountants and businesses will benefit from additional sales tax functionality from across Avalara’s suite of products, including e-filing options and more detailed reporting tools.

Sales tax continues to change and become more complex, especially for small businesses. We want to make it as easy as possible for these businesses to have access to automated solutions so they can focus on running their business, By partnering with Xero, we are able to inject Avalara’s tax compliance expertise and technology directly into a leading global accounting platform for a convenient way for businesses to manage sales tax. This partnership will also support accountants by automating the management of changing tax rates and rules, and providing validated data to process returns for clients.

– Sanjay Parthasarathy, chief product officer at Avalara

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Learning from my failures: Lessons from a 2-time founder

Darpan Munjal Contributor

Darpan Munjal is the founder and CEO of Squadhelp.

I was ready to put my entrepreneurial hat to rest. I had spent years building what I thought was shaping up to be a fashion e-commerce giant for the Indian marketplace. We’d raised pre-Series A funding of $4 million, led additional rounds and saw four years of solid growth.

Yet, at the end of these four years, we swallowed the pill and shut down the startup for reasons I will soon explain.

Something unexpected and positive, however, was born from this experience. I launched another startup and bootstrapped it, because I had a strong crutch this time — the lessons from my first failed venture. Today, Squadhelp — my second business — is the world’s largest naming platform.

Here are the lessons I’ve learned that I believe can help any entrepreneur succeed:

Delay fundraising until you have a strong initial offering that has shown some level of success in creating happy customers with profitable marketing.

Early-stage funding can lend a false sense of security

With solid early-stage funding at Fashionara, my first venture, our leadership and marketing team became overconfident. Our mindset was that the funding was our golden ticket. With a strong team and money in the bank, we had what we needed. But the reality was just the opposite.

We stopped paying attention to cost per acquisition, and instead concentrated on increasing our month-over-month acquisition numbers. Once these numbers were strong, we focused less on essential startup success factors, especially creating differentiated experiences for new customers, which could have set us apart from our competition and increased customer loyalty.

On the other hand, bootstrapping my second startup has forced me to be laser-focused. For example, our development team handles critical tasks such as creating differentiation and ensuring customer satisfaction. And, we regularly review our marketing efforts to ensure that our spending goes into channels and strategies that bring customers in sustainably.

We also scale spending when we achieve strong return on ad spend (ROAS) and reduce or eliminate spending that is not driving customers at the right cost. We even have marketing strategies that we only use when the market is strong. Conversely, when our business slows seasonally or due to economic factors, we can cut back on marketing spending to keep our finances healthy.

I would advise any startup to delay fundraising until you have a strong initial offering that has shown some level of success in creating happy customers with profitable marketing, and you can strongly believe that more capital would allow you to scale in specific, pre-defined areas.

Let customer satisfaction define your product roadmap

I’ve learned that customer feedback should significantly influence your business plan. At my second startup, we have daily meetings to go over feedback from our customers. We then prioritize and implement changes to our product, customer service and even our marketing weekly based on this feedback.

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October Energy Price Cap £3,549

The October Energy Price Cap has been announced with the shocking but unexpected news that it will rise 80% to £3,549.

This position changes from a Price Cap in August 2021 of £1,277, which rose to £1,971 in April 2022. The new October Energy Price Cap of £3,549 means households need to find an additional £189.33 per month since April and for many that’s simply not in their budget. A pensioner might have a State pension of around £195 a week and their energy costs have now risen from £24.56 per week before April to over £68 a week today – that’s 35% of their income, well over the 10% the government defines as Fuel Poverty.

In even worse news, the October Energy Price Cap is based on an average household – for those with larger houses to heat and so larger energy consumptions, they’ll be paying significantly more than the price cap and estimations of well over £5k a year are already a reality for many.

The price cap, as set out in law, puts a maximum per unit price on energy that reflects what it costs to buy energy on the wholesale market and supply it to our homes. It also sets a strict and modest profit rate of 1.9% of bills that suppliers can make from domestic energy sales.

Due to instability in the market, the energy price cap will be updated quarterly, rather than every six months, meaning that the next price rise for domestic fuel will hit in January in the middle of winter. Although Ofgem is not giving price cap projections for January because the market remains too volatile, the market for gas in Winter means that prices could get significantly worse through 2023.

For businesses this is a double blow – their own energy consumption is not protected by the price cap and the costs of lighting and heating their facilities, and for running essential computers and machinery is already skyrocketing. And at the other end of their balance sheet, consumers are going to have considerably less money to spend on their goods and services. While there is some Government help on offer for consumers, there is none for businesses.

We know the massive impact this price cap increase will have on households across Britain and the difficult decisions consumers will now have to make. I talk to customers regularly and I know that today’s news will be very worrying for many.

The price of energy has reached record levels driven by an aggressive economic act by the Russian state. They have slowly and deliberately turned off the gas supplies to Europe causing harm to our households, businesses and wider economy. Ofgem has no choice but to reflect these cost increases in the price cap.

The Government support package is delivering help right now, but it’s clear the new Prime Minister will need to act further to tackle the impact of the price rises that are coming in October and next year. We are working with ministers, consumer groups and industry on a set of options for the incoming Prime Minister that will require urgent action. The response will need to match the scale of the crisis we have before us. With the right support in place and with regulator, government, industry and consumers working together, we can find a way through this.

– Jonathan Brearley, CEO of Ofgem

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Instacart launches “Big & Bulky” fulfillment solution for U.S. retailers

Grocery technology company, Instacart have announced the launch of a new Big & Bulky” Fulfillment Solution for Retailers in the U.S. with launch partners that include Big Lots, Container Store, Mastermind Toys, Office Depot, Spirit Halloween and Staples.

The new “Big & Bulky” nationwide fulfillment solution enables same-day and scheduled delivery for large items, helping retailers offer more of their catalogs online to consumers. With Big & Bulky, customers can order their grocery items and household goods – such as grilling items, beverages, printer ink or packing tape – directly alongside their large item orders for delivery at the same time which means they can now rely on Instacart for all of their shopping needs with a single order.

As a retail enablement partner, our goal is to support retailers’ bottom lines by expanding their online catalogs through our enterprise solutions. We’re excited to introduce Big & Bulky today and look forward to continuing to serve as an industry-leading fulfillment platform.

– Daniel Danker, Chief Product Officer at Instacart

The fulfillment technology behind Big & Bulky is powered by Carrot Delivery, an Instacart Platform enterprise solution, providing end-to-end fulfillment for retailers. With this technology, retailers can further meet customer demand by delivering signature large items, further streamline their fulfillment pipelines and build incremental revenue.

We’re excited to continue to expand our partnership with Instacart to offer customers on their platform even greater access to products and solutions from Office Depot and OfficeMax stores, The new Big & Bulky fulfillment solution offers busy professionals and families a quick and convenient way to receive the office and school supplies they need to succeed, with the ability to pair large items like desks, bookcases, file cabinets, office chairs, and more, with smaller items like tech accessories, binders and printer ink, for delivery together, same-day.

– Jamie Columbus, Vice President of eCommerce for Office Depot.

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SheerID partners with BigCommerce

SheerID have joined forced with BigCommerce to enable BigCommerce merchants to provide exclusive offers and discounts to consumers.

Our partnership with SheerID further illustrates our commitment to providing merchants access to the highest-caliber technologies and service providers available in the industry, SheerID shares our desire to help merchants sell more and grow faster to maximize success, and we look forward to working together to mutually support customers.

– Russell Klein, chief commercial officer for BigCommerce

How SheerID works:

SheerID is powered by a digital verification engine with access to 20,000 authoritative data sources around the world that instantly verify eligible customers for exclusive offers. Global brands have found that verifying audiences for exclusive offers with the app generates three times the conversion of their typical campaigns and a return on ad spend.

The app combines powerful sub-second verification performance, no-code installation, and the following capabilities to help merchants on the BigCommerce platform streamline sales:

• Instant verification of eligible consumers without leaving the website
• Automatic brand and design integration
• BigCommerce promotion engine integration for single-use codes
• Ownership of zero-party data for future marketing and sales
• ROI reporting tracking conversion, revenue and AOV impact

Our strategic partnership with BigCommerce enables BigCommerce’s merchants to access our audience verification software seamlessly from within their market-leading ecommerce platform, In the cookieless future, online merchants will increasingly rely on zero-party data marketing solutions that are integrated directly into ecommerce platforms.

– Jake Weatherly, chief executive officer at SheerID

BigCommerce merchants can find the SheerID App in the BigCommerce Marketplace.

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Instacart now lets you order same-day delivery for large items, including furniture and electronics

Instacart announced today that it’s launching “Big & Bulky,” a new fulfillment capacity that lets customers order same-day and scheduled delivery for large items. At launch, the new feature can be used to order items from Big Lots, Container Store, Mastermind Toys, Office Depot, Spirit Halloween and Staples. The new capability allows users to place orders for several different types of large items, including outdoor furniture, home office supplies and electronics.

The company also notes that the new fulfillment capacity gives delivery people on its platform an additional way to earn money. Shoppers who own a large vehicle may now be eligible to access what Instacart calls “Bulky Batches.” Instacart says batch payment will be based on the number and weight of the items in the order, and “will include heavy pay when applicable.”

Shoppers who have an eligible vehicle can opt in to receive Bulky Batches by tapping “Access More Batches” in the Shopper app. Instacart’s initial test zones showed that 97% of eligible shoppers opted in to deliver Bulky Batches.

Instacart is also introducing new delivery options in select regions for people who have an electric bike or moped. Shoppers who choose to deliver orders on an electric bike or moped will be given orders with shorter distances and fewer items. Although it would be difficult to use an electric bike or moped to deliver typical Instacart orders, which can include large items like cases of water and numerous bags, the new small orders option gives people who don’t have access to a car the ability to work with the company.

“We’re excited to introduce these new opportunities for shoppers to increase your earnings, whether you have a large vehicle or none at all,” the company said in a statement. “We look forward to bringing you new updates and product features that will improve your experience as a shopper in the coming months.”

Instacart will begin testing these new delivery options in select cities across the U.S. and Canada in the coming weeks.

Today’s announcement comes as Instacart has been building out its features over the past few months. Most recently, the company launched a new “OrderUp” feature that lets users add items from additional retailers to their original grocery order without having to pay an extra delivery fee. The company says the new feature gives users a way to complete their weekly shopping in one delivery trip.

The company also recently announced that Electronic Benefits Transfer and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (EBT SNAP) can now be used to buy groceries online in 10 additional states through its app. With this expansion, grocers of all sizes can use Carrot Payments, an Instacart Platform solution, to accept EBT SNAP payments online across 49 states and Washington, D.C.

Instacart’s latest feature lets you order from two retailers with one delivery fee

Instacart clears path to IPO

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Lily AI lands new capital to help retailers match customers with products

During the pandemic, retailers were forced to embrace e-commerce. But some found that they struggled to maintain customer loyalty as consumer expectations changed and purchasing patterns shifted. As a result of formidable competition like Amazon, they discovered, customers have low patience for sites that don’t present them with what they want. According to research from the Baymard Institute, for every 100 potential customers, 70 will leave without purchasing.

That’s why Purva Gupta launched Lily AI, an AI-powered platform that connects a retailer’s or brand’s shoppers with products they might be looking to buy. Co-founded by Sowmiya Narayanan, Lily provides algorithms designed to power web store components like search engines and product discovery carousels.

Lily today announced that it raised $25 million in a Series B funding round led by Canaan, bringing its total raised to $41 million.

“Different shoppers search uniquely, making it essential for retail ecommerce brands to build the right product taxonomy to capture both common and long-tail searches,” Gupta told TechCrunch via email. “Think of your own frustrating experiences on retail ecommerce sites and receiving irrelevant results or worse, no results at all, even when the product you’re looking for is clearly carried by that retailer.”

Prior to co-launching Lily, Gupta served in various roles at Eko India and UNICEF. Narayanan brought her experience developing software at Texas Instruments, Yahoo! (full disclosure: TechCrunch’s parent company) and Box, where she was a full-stack web dev for the product Box Notes. 

Lily began life as an app for retailers to help understand women shoppers’ personal preferences around fashion. But when traction proved hard to gain, Gupta and Narayanan pivoted to build a more enterprise-focused solution packaged as a plug-in, software-as-a-service subscription product. 

Lily now retains a team of “experts” in fashion, home and beauty who help to refine product taxonomies, which are then used to train algorithms for product search and recommendations. (The group also researches and develops ways to turn product attributes like “ribbed fabric” and “minimalist dressing style” into a mathematical “language” that the algorithms can understand.) Essentially, Lily captures details on products based on traits (e.g. “style,” “fit” and “occasion”) and uses customer data from brands tied to the item attribute data to create a prediction of each customer’s affinity to attributes of products in the catalog.

Image Credits: Lily AI

Gupta acknowledges that there are other companies in the product attribution and automated product tagging spaces that rely on automation and AI. For example, Depict.ai provides a product recommendation tool that draws on data from across the internet. Black Crow AI is developing a platform to predict which products e-commerce customers will buy, while Constructor sells access to a framework that powers search and discovery for digital retail marketplaces.

Meta has also experimented with apparel attribute prediction for Facebook Marketplace, two years ago showcasing a system that could extract clothing attributes and fashion styles from photos of models on Instagram and Flickr.

But she argues that Lily is one of the more powerful options out there in terms of its configurability. Gupta also stressed that the platform is privacy-preserving to the extent it’s able to be, not using customer names, addresses or financial transaction information in favor of using anonymized user interactions on its customers’ ecommerce sites.

What does the future look like for e-commerce aggregators?

“The IT decision makers with whom we work are focused on the more concrete and tangible application of Lily versus being on the strategic frontlines. They are interested in the depth and accuracy of information Lily can provide; how we are training the models; and accuracy of output and confidence levels,” she said. “We win with the customization of our product to deliver on their needs and a dedicated customer success team available to take into account changes to goals or results over time.”

In any case, big-name customers have signed up for Lily’s services to date, including Macy’s, The Gap and its assorted brands, Bloomingdale’s and thredUP.

Lily is loathe to make its revenue figures public, and the 87-employee company says it doesn’t have a projection for the size of its headcount for the end of the year. Brushing aside questions about the secrecy, Gupta asserts that Lily is “well-positioned” to capitalize on new retail verticals in the coming months, even factoring in macroeconomic headwinds.

“Lily AI grew tremendously since the start of the pandemic, as the health crises rapidly intensified the retail shift to e-commerce and digital transformation,” Gupta said. “We’ll use the new funding to further expand into enterprise and mid-market retail e-commerce brands across home, beauty and fashion … We also plan to extend our solution much deeper to further applications within the retail stack, as well as further a suite of rich analytics for our customers.”

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Help to Grow: BigCommerce £5k subsidy

 BigCommerce has been selected as an approved ecommerce technology supplier for the UK government backed Help to Grow: Digital scheme.

The Help to Grow: Digital scheme offers BigCommerce’s ecommerce platform at subsidised rates, allowing small- and medium-sized UK businesses to build modern online storefronts that drive competition, innovative customer experiences and sales growth.

BigCommerce’s flexible enterprise-grade ecommerce platform helps B2C and B2B brands of all sizes establish and maximise their online presence without the need for technical skills or expensive hosting. 1.24 million UK businesses are now eligible for up to £5000 of subsidies towards BigCommerce products

Selling online can be transformative for businesses, and SaaS solutions are lowering the barrier to entry for ecommerce across the world. We’re honoured to partner with the UK Government as an approved ecommerce provider for this great scheme. As ecommerce continues to become widely accessible, small- and medium-sized businesses no longer need to take on designing, hosting, securing, and updating proprietary sites themselves. BigCommerce allows retailers to build beautiful bespoke sites, taking care of the technical side so that entrepreneurs can focus on what matters most — growing their business.

– Jim Herbert, senior vice president and general manager of EMEA, BigCommerce

Help to Grow: Digital scheme BigCommerce subsidy

Help to Grow: Digital allows businesses that employ between one and 249 people to adopt the latest CRM, digital accounting and ecommerce software by covering 50% of the costs or up to £5000. The expanded requirements have increased the number of eligible businesses to 1.24 million UK businesses.

Extending our Help to Grow: Digital scheme and welcoming new suppliers such as BigCommerce on board will enable thousands more SMEs to become more innovative, more competitive and more profitable. Helping British businesses adopt new technology to sell online will enable them to reach new customers, drive sales and position themselves for the future. This will boost productivity and help create jobs and prosperity across the UK.

– Lord Callanan, Business Minister

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Yandex’s sale of media assets to VK includes yandex.ru homepage

Russian search giant Yandex has finalized the sale of its two flagship media properties to local rival VK, owner of the eponymous social network.

The deal to sell the products, Yandex’s algorithmically sorted news aggregator (News) and blogging recommender platform (Zen), was inked back in April. But today’s binding agreement goes further than that — also including the sale of the main page, Yandex.ru, which integrates content from News and Zen into the search page, turning it into a information-rich (critics say disinformation-rich) portal by featuring a number of infinite-scroll content feeds.

This means that, once the sale completes, visitors browsing to Yandex.ru will be redirected to a renamed version of the page, dzen.ru — which will be controlled and developed by VK, the incoming owner of Yandex’s two media products.

We also understand the VK version of the Yandex.ru portal will still feature Yandex’s search service — but just as a standard iframe integration (meaning it will not get access to search data). So for regular users of Yandex.ru the only immediately obvious sign of the change of ownership will be the redirected URL.

As we reported in June, Yandex has been signalling a looming shift of focus to an alternative local homepage, ya.ru — a bare-bones search portal it has owned for decades alongside the denser Yandex.ru page, where news content dominates the experience. The latter portal has, increasingly, become a major reputational headache for a business that prefers to claim it’s just a neutral tech firm so it’s easy to see the attraction for Yandex of switching to a plain, search-focused homepage.

Yandex shifts focus to ya.ru as it heads for media exit in Russia

“The Board and management of Yandex have concluded that the interests of the company’s shareholders, including its Class A shareholders, are best served by pursing the strategic exit from its media business (other than entertainment streaming) and shifting focus on other technologies and services, including search, advertising, online-to-offline transactional businesses and a number of b2b technology businesses, among others,” the company wrote in a press release today.

“The Board of Directors has approved the transaction. In line with this strategic focus, ya.ru will become Yandex’s main page and the key entry point into Search, Mail and other non-media services,” it added — saying the core service for the new main page, and for a new Android application it’s launching focused on its AI assistant tech, called Yandex with Alice, will be its search engine.

“Upon the completion of the transaction, Yandex’s current main application for Android will change its name to Yandex Start. It will then function as a browser and users will be able to choose the start page in their settings. The Yandex app for iOS will continue to work as before but without Zen and News.

“Following the completion of the transaction, the current main page with News and Zen will be renamed dzen.ru and will be further developed and controlled by VK (including control over the look and feel, content etc). The related News and Zen brands and technologies will also be transferred to VK.”

A source close to the matter told TechCrunch the sale of the content services has become “a strategic priority” for Yandex since the outbreak of war in Ukraine which has led to a sharp rise in censorship by the Russia state. “It has become very difficult to remain independent in the presence of services such as News and Zen,” they suggested.

Yandex has faced trenchant criticism over the role of its platforms in spreading and amplifying state propaganda from the likes of jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny — who, in one public attack earlier this year, accused the company of “a solid shameless lie” in claiming to display ‘news’ on its homepage, given how its News feed amplifies state propaganda.

A number of senior Yandex execs have also been sanctioned by the EU — although the company itself has, so far, evaded formal sanction.

Whether selling off the two main online content conduits that the Kremlin has, through a regime of tightening media licensing and regulation, been able to appropriate to amplify its talking points will deliver the sought for reboot of Yandex’s reputation remains to be seen.

The price to Yandex for the media exit looks high as it’s essentially losing the ability to use its own trademarked brand name locally by handing control of the Russian portal (and all the traffic it generates) to VK, a Kremlin-linked rival — which only looks set to deepen the state’s take-over of the digital info-sphere in the country.

In return, Yandex is acquiring 100% of VK-owned food delivery service, Delivery Club “as sole consideration for these assets”, as its press release puts it — confirming there is no monetary payment attached to the transaction. (And on-demand delivery is hardly a poster-child for post-pandemic success, with meal delivery platforms hit by shrinking consumer demand as the global economic downturn and inflationary pressures bite.)

“Delivery Club, the leading food and grocery delivery service in Russia, will become a part of Yandex’s Ecommerce, Mobility and Delivery segment,” said Yandex. “Following the completion of the transaction, users will be able to continue to use both Yandex Eats and Delivery Club apps, while couriers, working with Delivery Club, will join the Yandex Pro technological platform. Yandex intends to maintain the Delivery Club brand.”

The sale of Yandex’s media properties still needs regulatory approval to complete — with the company noting it is subject to anti-monopoly approval in Russia but adding that it expects the transaction to close in “the coming months”.

“We couldn’t get rid of News and Zen any other way,” our source close to the matter told us, suggesting that a requirement for the Kremlin to approve major business changes has limited Yandex’s options.

Back in 2019, the Russian firm agreed to a corporate restructuring that increased Kremlin control over the business by granting a veto over key company decisions (including around IP) to a body with close government ties.

“This was actually the only way we can focus on tech. We have lots of people working at Yandex. We didn’t want the company to close,” the source added. “This decision was very hard for us to make but there wasn’t any other way to manage that.”

Early this year, in an interview with TechCrunch, Yandex’s former deputy CTO, Grigory Bakunov, told us the company’s leadership was naive to the risk of a Kremlin takeover of the algorithmically driven content-sorting technologies they were developing — and its execs passed up earlier chances to pro-actively shutter products that the state was able, through a combination of legislation, regulation/licensing and by installing state supporters on Yandex’s board, to ‘virtually takeover’ by 2017 (with the passing of a law requiring news aggregators to only use state-approved sites as news sources).

The strange prospect of a local Internet giant passing off its own brand-named search portal — and all the traffic it attracts — to a rival is just the latest ‘through-the-looking-glass’ moment for the Russian Internet since the Kremlin took the decision to invade its neighbor. In another example earlier this summer, Yandex opted to erase national borders from its Maps app in a bid to circumvent political pressure over where the software was drawing frontiers in Ukraine.

Tighter Kremlin regulation of search services inside Russia could yet bring more such painful passes to Yandex.

Russia’s war hits Yandex, the ‘Google of Russia’

Yandex signs deal with VK to sell its media products, News and Zen

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eBay set to acquire TCGplayer

If anyone knows how valuable collectable trading cards are it’s eBay, the marketplace that has seen all kinds of them pass through, reaching all kinds of prices. It’s not surprising to hear that the marketplace is in talks to acquire trading card marketplace TCGplayer.

Trading cards are an attractive category, which has seen substantial growth. TCGplayer is a leading technology platform for the collectibles industry, and will continue to operate separately to eBay as one of the largest online marketplaces for trading card games. This acquisition complements eBay’s focus category strategy and furthers the company’s commitment to trading card enthusiasts – providing eBay with strategic omnichannel capabilities like order fulfillment and cart optimization, maintaining its position as a desirable platform for trading card sellers, and enhancing the overall experience for all customers.

eBay continues to build on our 26 years of experience in trading cards, powering local hobby stores and Main Street retailers to deliver an online destination that collectors love, eBay has always fueled our customers’ passion in this space and facilitated connections between buyers and sellers, and with TCGplayer, we can enhance the customer experience across categories, forge even more relationships, and cater to enthusiasts around the world.

– Dawn Block, VP of Collectibles at eBay

Over the past two years, eBay has introduced a range of products and enhancements for buyers and sellers in the trading cards and collectibles category. The recent launch of eBay vault was one service that has provided sellers of collectables with a service that makes authentication, storage and shipping much easier.

eBay will acquire TCGplayer for a total deal value of up to approximately $295 million. The deal is subject to customary closing conditions, including requisite regulatory approvals, and is expected to close in Q1 2023.

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Why the ‘last click’ in e-commerce matters — and how to get it right

Maju Kuruvilla Contributor

Maju Kuruvilla is the CEO of Bolt. Prior to Bolt, Maju was the VP and GM for Amazon’s Global Logistics, managing its business unit spanning business, product, engineering and operations.

What is the biggest and most obvious problem facing e-commerce retailers?

Checkout. By that, I mean customers who find their way to a retailer’s digital home, decide to buy an item, add the item to cart and press checkout — only to quit the last part of the transaction.

This seems like a small issue, but in fact, it is an enormous cost for retailers — to the tune of billions of dollars by some industry estimates. Yet, despite the size of the checkout problem, fixing the issue also ends up as the last item on many to-do lists.

That’s partly because checkout is at the bottom of the funnel. At the top of the funnel are the big-ticket, splashy items: Ad campaigns, paid traffic, product-market fit, media relations, and everything that feels weighty and important.

Companies spend time, money and energy getting people in the door, building meaningful products and services, and keeping those people in their e-commerce ecosystem. Generally, marketing teams control many of those aforementioned levers — they do paid social, SEO and SEM marketing, billboards and all the other campaigns that bring customers in.

Every dollar of marketing at the top of the funnel can be augmented by a focus on checkout.

At the bottom of the funnel are technical and product teams, and usually someone responsible for payment infrastructure. Those people tend to be graded on whether things work — not necessarily how well they work.

Thus, checkout becomes an orphan: Neither the explicit focus of the marketing team, nor a key area of interest for product and technical leads. And all the while, customers shop without buying — they exhibit high “purchase intent” but neglect to make actual purchases.

To put it more simply: You may have perfected the top of the funnel, but you very well could have missed the gaps in the bottom.

But in a world of scarce resources and scarcer time, how can you get senior leadership to rally around lost conversion and broken checkout as a key area of strategic focus?

The following five steps might help you fix the “last click”problem:

Reframe checkout as a marketing opportunity not a product problem

Think of checkout like this: The top of the funnel is low-performing marketing spend, and the bottom of the funnel is high-performing marketing spend.

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eBay is acquiring trading card marketplace TCGplayer for up to $295M

eBay is acquiring TCGplayer, an online marketplace for collectible trading card games, in a deal valued up to $295 million, the company announced on Monday. The deal is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023. eBay says the acquisition furthers its commitment to trading card enthusiasts and also noted that trading cards are currently showing “substantial growth.”

Founded in 2008, TCGplayer has grown from Syracuse-based hobby stores into an e-commerce platform. TCGplayer, which currently employs more than 600 people, will continue to operate autonomously following the acquisition. 

“eBay continues to build on our 26 years of experience in trading cards, powering local hobby stores and Main Street retailers to deliver an online destination that collectors love,” said Dawn Block, the Vice President of Collectibles at eBay, in a press release. “eBay has always fueled our customers’ passion in this space and facilitated connections between buyers and sellers, and with TCGplayer, we can enhance the customer experience across categories, forge even more relationships, and cater to enthusiasts around the world.”

In a statement, TCGplayer founder and CEO Chedy Hampson said the acquisition will give the company a chance to benefit from eBay’s industry experience and resources while TCGplayer continues to operate independently. Hampson noted that he will remain in his position as CEO of TCGplayer. He also said the company will keep its headquarters in downtown Syracuse after the deal closes.

“With eBay’s support, we will advance our purpose, and expand our tools and services to improve the collecting experience online and in your favorite local hobby store,” Hampson said in the press release.

eBay has long been a place for trading card enthusiasts to buy and sell, and the company has recently been working to solidify its place in the market. In January, the company expanded its authentication service to include support for authenticating valuable trading cards worth at least $750. At the time, eBay said it saw the value in adding authentication support for trading cards due to the volume of activity in the category on its site. The company said the trading cards category is growing “significantly faster” than its total marketplace, and that the category saw $2 billion in transactions in the first half of 2021. That’s equal to all of the trading card transactions that took place in 2020, for comparison.

As eBay deals with increased competition from services like Facebook Marketplace and other local buying apps, the company has been working to better establish itself as a place where people can seek out collectibles. The company’s latest acquisition shows that eBay sees increased potential in trading cards, as the company notes that the agreement offers a way for it to “maintain its position as a desirable platform for trading card sellers.”

Today’s announcement comes two months after eBay said it was acquiring Manchester-based NFT marketplace KnownOrigin for an undisclosed sum. The platform enables artists and collectors to create, buy and resell NFTs. eBay said it’s acquiring the entire company, including IP and the team. Earlier this year, eBay launched its first collection of NFTs in partnership with web3 platform OneOf.

eBay will now authenticate trading cards worth $750 or more

eBay acquires NFT marketplace KnownOrigin for an undisclosed sum

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4 ways founders can amplify revenue during hard times

Ari Jacoby Contributor

Ari Jacoby is the CEO and co-founder of Deduce.

Anyone who travels frequently will tell you that one of the greatest innovations of the past decade has been the TSA PreCheck.

It’s so simple and effective that it makes you wonder why no one thought of it before. This example can serve as adequate inspiration for businesses, especially as the markets show no signs of recovery: How can companies, hoping to retain revenue during the recession, do something similar?

Companies should be offering an express lane when times are tight so customers can get into the online store, check out and be done without any roadblocks or friction to mar their experience.

How do we create customer experiences that are equivalent to the TSA PreCheck to help us retain revenue?

The biggest stumbling block for repeat customers and retained revenue might come from an unlikely place — your security protocols.

Know thy customer: A password-less future

It is critical to understand if a visitor to your site is a new customer trying to create an account, a returning customer or a fraudster trying to steal your customer data. If you can determine whether someone is a legitimate customer up front, you won’t have to verify their email addresses or phone numbers during the account creation workflow — friction that security teams introduce to keep things secure.

I read a sobering statistic recently: While U.S. businesses will lose $95 billion to fraud this year, incorrectly identifying prospective and returning customers will cost those businesses almost $1.8 trillion.

About 58% of U.S. consumers abandon their cart due to difficulties managing their password, according to the FIDO Alliance. This shows us that you should grease the wheels of the sale in any way possible. In times of recession, you have to make things easier, not more difficult.

A business can very likely calculate the cost it incurs to get each new individual to create an account on their site or app. It should also know what the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer is and what impact its brand reputation has when things don’t go right. In other words, a company  should be aware of how many potential new customers complete the sign-up form but are then challenged to “verify their email” and never do so.

Parameter	Calculated values
Number of monthly accounts created	50,000
Percentage of incomplete account creations	9.00
Number of accounts incomplete or churned	4,500
Customer LTV	$50
Lost LTV due to churn	$225,000
Percentage of LTV attributed to cost of acquisition	10
Monthly cost of acquisition lost	$22,500
Percentage of LTV attributed to brand reputation damage	1
Total monthly brand reputation damage	$2,250
Total loss per month	$249,750
Annual loss due to account churn	$2,997,000

Let’s say you see 50,000 accounts created per month, and 9% (the industry average) never complete the sign-up process due to the authentication step. If your LTV is $50 and your cost of acquisition is 10% of LTV ($5), and your brand reputation damage was 1% of LTV ($0.50), then your security measures are costing you nearly $2.5 million per year.

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Shopee reveals Malaysians’ impact on ecommerce

Shopee have revealed new data from a survey of over 3,300 buyers and 2,100 Shopee sellers across Malaysia, and examines the impact Malaysians are making on the economy through their continued online shopping behaviours.

Income generated online is hugely important to Malaysians as 45% sellers surveyed concede that it enables them to support their family (providing for living essentials, education, lifestyle), about 26% save and invest this income for rainy days ahead, and the remainder use it to sustain a better quality of life, keep staff employed, and enhance their personal development.

More than eight in ten participating sellers attribute the long-term success of their store to locally tailored shopping experiences: ‘Very straightforward buying and fulfilment process’ on Shopee (34%), the recognition of Made in Malaysia products as affordable and of high quality (23%), great customer service (19%) and optimised storefront with Shopee’s marketing tools (9%).

Despite the reopening of the economy, nine in ten Malaysian shoppers still prefer online shopping. In fact, more than half of shoppers on the platform have adopted online shopping more permanently: 21% feel it is now a habit, 17% say they can easily find readily available stocks online, and 14% want to access choices that are not available offline in their specific location. 43% of shoppers value shopping around online to compare prices in this inflationary environment.

Getting items delivered faster is the strongest reason for Malaysian buyers to shop from local sellers (42% of buyers). 20% feel strongly about supporting Made in Malaysia goods to keep the economy running in Malaysia, 19% have preferences for locally tailored products and 11% believe in the quality of locally sourced and made goods.

Celebrating the Heart of Malaysia on E-Commerce survey underscores how Malaysian sellers continue to succeed and build financial security by selling on online marketplaces like Shopee. It’s important for business owners to understand that Malaysian shoppers do have motivations beyond price for shopping online. They can create more loyalty and engagement simply by matching their offerings and content with buyer values.

– Kenneth Soh, Head of Marketing Campaigns at Shopee Malaysia

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Stranger Things star helps ThredUP educate Gen Z on sustainable fashion

Priah Ferguson who plays Erica Sinclair in hit Netflix show Stranger Things has been enlisted by ThredUP to educate Gen Z on the reality of Fast Fashion whilst urging them to embrace sustainable fashion.

ThredUP have had a tough Q2 and recently offloaded 15% of their workforce, likely spurred on by reduced consumer spending. This is not surprising though, and ThredUP are not the only company who have had to lay off staff this year.

So now we are seeing ThredUP kick up a marketing campaign called ‘Fast Fashion Confessional Hotline‘ and they are targeting it towards the generation who are breaking all kinds of boundaries.

ThredUP and Stranger Things star Priah’s Fast Fashion Confessional Hotline will offer callers the chance to confess their fast fashion sins and get the support they need to make the switch to healthier shopping habits. When U.S. callers dial 1-855-THREDUP, they’ll hear Priah’s voice on the other line convincing them not to buy more fast fashion.

What’s so great about Gen Z?

Gen Z are living their younger years through all kinds of economic and environmental struggles. They are watching how the older generations are reacting and they are thinking about expenses and sustainability differently.

Despite this, 1 in 3 Gen Z say they feel addicted to fast fashion but this doesn’t mean they are not conscious of the issue, and as in other reports have been represented as leading the recommence movement. Although there is a temptation to shop fast fashion, the awareness and desire for sustainable living is gradually pushing through in the generations to come.

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DoorDash is reportedly ending its delivery partnership with Walmart

DoorDash is ending its partnership with Walmart after more than four years of delivering the retail giant’s products to customers, according to a new report from Business Insider. Sources familiar with the matter told Insider that DoorDash decided to end its partnership with Walmart because it was no longer mutually beneficial and because the delivery company wanted to focus on “its long-term customer relationships.”

A spokesperson for Walmart told Insider that the two companies “have agreed to part ways.”

DoorDash is said to have sent Walmart a 30-day notice and a letter earlier this month to end their partnership. The termination will go into effect in September.

The termination will end a partnership that began in April 2018 as a pilot to deliver Walmart groceries to customers in the Atlanta metro area. Since then, the partnership expanded to states across the country.

Although Walmart has partnered with third-party delivery services like DoorDash, the retail giant has also been focused on building out its own delivery efforts. For instance, Insider reported on Thursday that Walmart is acquiring Delivery Drivers, which is the company behind Walmart’s Spark platform that sees gig workers deliver orders to customers. A Walmart spokesperson told Insider that the Spark platform has grown to become the company’s largest delivery service provider and that it accounts for 75% of Walmart deliveries.

DoorDash, on the other hand, has been building out its DoorDash Drive platform, its business-to-business service that provides drivers to merchants through their own website or app.

While DoorDash’s partnership with Walmart is coming to a close, the company has geared up to collaborate with another notable brand, Facebook parent Meta. DoorDash confirmed earlier this week that DoorDash Drive is now in the early stages of testing a service that will allow DoorDash drivers to pick up and drop off Facebook Marketplace items to customers. DoorDash and Meta are currently offering the test service in several cities in the United States.

It’s worth noting that DoorDash has also been testing a package return feature since March that allows customers to return items to the post office, UPS or FedEx.

DoorDash and Walmart did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

DoorDash partners with Meta to test delivery of Facebook Marketplace items

DoorDash is testing a feature that lets you return packages to post offices, FedEx or UPS

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eBay extend seller protections for Royal Mail strikes

As you are probably aware, there is a chance we will be seeing Royal Mail strikes for up to 8 days over the next few months. Following this, eBay have announced that they will extend seller protections to cover merchants who use the affected services.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) at Royal Mail and Parcelforce has called on its members who collect, sort and deliver parcels and mail to take strike action on Friday 26th and Wednesday 31st August and Thursday 8th and Friday 9th September 2022.

– eBay

The bad news is that postal strikes could be a common theme for a while and further postal strikes are likely as the fight for working conditions continues.

The good news is that sellers on eBay, who continue to use Royal Mail and Parcel Force will be protected. You can also use other courier options available during the strikes including, Evri, Yodel, UPS, DHL & Fedex.

eBay extend seller protections

eBay will automatically protect your performance between Monday 22nd August and Monday 18th September for transactions for:

• Your late delivery rate, which will be removed for transactions with estimated delivery dates between the above dates.
• Your “item not received” count in your Service Metrics dashboard will be automatically removed. We will also remove any negative and neutral feedback relating to or arising from late or non delivery during this period.

All sellers who drop off parcels at Post Office, Royal Mail/Parcelforce parcel points and postboxes:

• There will be very limited collections from these locations on strike days.
• Post Offices, parcel post boxes and post boxes will still be available for drop offs.
• There will be no Parcel Collect available on strike days.
• Items posted before, during and after the strike days will be subject to delay.
• You may experience longer than usual waiting times for Royal Mail Customer Service.

What can you do?

• If you already use other carriers, it is advisable to use them to send your items during this time & contact them in advance to update your forecast volumes. Please also ensure you use the carrier you specified on the listing.
• If you currently only use Royal Mail to send you items, then please consider switching to an alternative courier during the strike period.
• If you buy your delivery labels elsewhere, remember to upload tracking numbers to your transactions to allow your buyers to see where their items are. By doing this you’ll also be better protected in the event of delays.

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