Six retail technology funding rounds you need to know about
RTIH rounds up the retail systems ventures whose funding rounds have been making headlines of late, including Cover Genius, Dropit, Treet, and SparkPlug.
1. Cover Genius
Cover Genius, which specialises in embedded insurance, has raised $70 million in Series D funding in a round led by Dawn Capital, with participation from new investor, Atlas Merchant Capital, and existing backers including GSquared and King River Capital.
The raise will assist in the InsurTech’s growth and expansion of its insurance distribution platform, XCover.
It builds on a £54 million Series C funding round from last year.
The company has secured $165 million in total funding to date.
2. SparkPlug
SparkPlug, an incentive management and wage supplementation platform for frontline workers, has announced an $8 million Series A funding round.
This was led by Lightbank, with participation from Industry Ventures, as well as existing investors TenOneTen Ventures and Jason Calacanis, bringing the company’s total investment raised to $11.5 million.
The new capital will be used to fuel SparkPlug’s growth plans which include key executive hires and investments into data, development, and behavioral science expertise to continue expanding its platform.
3. Trigo
Checkout free stores specialist Trigo has bagged $100 million in funding, reaching a total of $204 million raised to date.
The investment was led by Singapore state investment firm Temasek (TEM.UL), and 83North.
New strategic investors include SAP and existing backers also joined the round, including Hetz Ventures, Red Dot Capital Partners, Vertex Ventures, Viola, and supermarket giant REWE Group.
4. Dropit
Dropit, which provides sourcing, allocation, fulfilment and last mile distribution solutions that can be integrated directly into brands’ existing fulfilment management systems, has completed a $25 million Series C funding round, bringing the company’s total funding to $50 million.
This was led by Vault Investments, a first time investor who will also be joining Dropit’s board. The round was supported by previous backers such as Tiga Investments, Axentia, and Sugarbee.
The new capital will enable it to build out its US sales office in Austin, Texas, grow its team to over 100 employees and add key hires for open positions across 12 states to support both brand and mall partners.
5. Krepling
E-commerce platform startup, Krepling, has closed a $1 million pre-seed round.
Founded by brothers Liam JE Gerada and Travis Gerada (who are 22 and 19 years old respectively), the Silicon Valley-based firm enables merchants and retailers to build and scale their e-commerce operations through no-code and AI enablement.
Krepling says that it is “seeking to democratise the functionality being brought about by other e-commerce 3.0 and headless players like Fabric and Nacelle”.
It is focused on earlier stage merchants as well as more established businesses, especially those in the mid-market category,
Jason Calacanis (early investor in Uber, Robinhood, and Thumbtack, among others), LAUNCH, Jon Oringer (founder of Shutterstock), and Brickyard (founders of Bellhops) lead the pre-seed round.
Krepling plans to use the cash to evolve its model and continue to expand its team. It recently announced Krepling Pay, pitched as the world’s first agnostic digital wallet for e-commerce.
6. Treet
Resale platform specialist Treet has announced a $3.5 million seed investment led by First Round Capital, with participation from its pre-seed investors: Bling Capital, Techstars, Interlace Ventures, Alante Capital, BAM Ventures, and BBG Ventures.
"Treet's platform makes branded resale a no-brainer for e-commerce companies looking for a meaningful way to grow while being more sustainable in the process. Given changing consumer preferences, I believe resale will be table stakes for all brands in the near future,” says Hayley Barna, Partner at First Round Capital.
“First Round is thrilled to invest in the company, a pioneer in branded resale, building the most flexible resale platform for e-commerce brands and we support its mission to help every item live its longest life."
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