Heyday.AI Raises $2 Million for AI - Powered Shopping Assistant

By Isabelle Kirkwood

Montreal-based Heyday, a digital shopping assistant and live chat solution, has announced the close of a $2 million oversubscribed seed round led by Innovobot. The financing round also includes investments from Desjardins Capital and several strategic investors with deep marketing and retail expertise.

Founded in 2017, Heyday’s platform combines conversational AI and automation with sales and support teams. It has e-commerce and customer relationship management integrations with Shopify, Lightspeed, and Magento. Client brands include Ford, Lincoln, Decathlon, and food product company Danone. Etienne Mérineau, co-founder and CMO of Heyday told BetaKit the company was bootstrapped by its first 20 employees. The company’s headcount currently sits at 20 full-time team members, and five part-time freelancers.

Heyday said this round will help further its mission to help retailers create seamless shopping experiences across touchpoints, and bridge the divide between physical and digital stores. The company’s goal is ​to usher in a new era of bespoke customer shopping experiences through one on one conversations.

“We’re on a mission to give AI superpowers to CX teams so they can deliver an unparalleled level of service at scale, either via web-based chat or via leading messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Google RCS, and Apple Business Chat, to name a few,” said Mérineau.

Part of the financing from this round will also go towards supporting and expanding the company’s engineering, research, and product teams, and to accelerate its global expansion in the United States and continental Europe.

Lead investor Innovobot is an investment and advisory services firm, that has previously invested in Ikkuma, a cloud-based wellness platform, as well as Carbicrete, a Montreal-based company commercializing a technology that enables the production of cement-free, carbon-negative concrete.

“The virtual customer assistant space is booming​,” said Innovobot CEO Mario Venditti. “Heyday is strategically positioned to capture the market thanks to its experienced executive team and the breadth of their conversational AI technology.”

Source. Betakit Isabelle Kirwood, April 25, 2019

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Canada Week. Mejuri Raises $23M in Series B Funding

Mejuri, a Toronto, Canada-based direct-to-consumer online jewelry retailer, raised $23m in Series B funding.

The round was led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Incite Ventures, BDC Capital, Felix Capital, Imaginary Ventures, and Dash Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations and grow its business reach.

Founded in 2015 by Noura Sakkijha and Majed Masad, Mejuri is an online direct to consumer fine jewelry company focused on millennial women.

The brand works with top jewelers, who commit to craftsmanship and ethical practices, to elimiate middlemen and produce quality essentials to sell directly to consumers.

The company also operates two retail stores in NYC and Toronto.

Source. FinSMEs, Staff, April 30, 2019

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ShopBack secures US$45m in oversubscribed funding round co-led by Rakuten, EV Growth

SINGAPORE - Homegrown cashback platform ShopBack has raised US$45 million in an equity funding round, with new investors including co-leads Rakuten Capital and EV Growth, as well as EDBI, the investment arm of Singapore's Economic Development Board.

The round was over-subscribed, ShopBack told The Business Times.

Willson Cuaca, managing partner of EV Growth, and Amit Patel, CEO of Ebates Inc, which is a Rakuten company, will join ShopBack's board of directors. Rakuten Capital is the investment arm of the Japanese e-commerce giant, while EV Growth is a joint venture between Sinar Mas, East Ventures and Yahoo! Japan.

The latest capital injection brings ShopBack's total funding to US$83 million.

ShopBack, which is also backed by SoftBank Ventures Asia, said its new round of funding will be used to simplify shopping experiences, expand data capabilities to fuel personalisation and business insights, as well as accelerate growth in key markets.

"The company remains focused on building rewards and discovery features to enhance both online and offline shopping experiences for consumers across the Asia Pacific," ShopBack said in a press statement on Wednesday.

Besides rewarding users with cash back for making online purchases, ShopBack has also created features to improve users' buying experiences. For instance, its latest product, ShopBack GO, launched in partnership with Visa and Mastercard, enables users to dine out and get paid, the company said.

ShopBack said it saw a 250 per cent year-on-year growth in orders and sales in 2018.

The company facilitated over 2.5 million monthly transactions for more than 7 million users across seven Asia Pacific countries,and delivered close to US$1 billion sales for over 2,000 merchant partners in both the online and offline spaces, it said.

In the same year, ShopBack entered Australia, its first market outside Asia. It also opened research and development hubs in Vietnam and Taiwan, driving a threefold increase in its engineering, data, and product management talent pool.

EDBI chief executive Chu Swee Yeok said in a statement: "ShopBack is well-poised to be a leading digital rewards and discovery platform in the Asia-Pacific region, enhancing online brands and merchants' reach to consumers while delivering seamless personalised experience to consumers with its data science capabilities. There is tremendous opportunity for the company to extend its impressive platform to offline merchants and other business areas.

"As a strategic investor which is actively nurturing promising Singapore companies, EDBI is excited to support ShopBack as the company expands aggressively in the region, riding on Asia's exciting growth."

Source. The Straitstimes, Staff, April 10, 2019

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