Grocery retail technology startup Swiftly bags unicorn status
Swiftly has announced a $100 million Series C funding round led by BRV Capital Management, bringing the company's total valuation to more than $1 billion.
This marks Swiftly’s second $100 million financing round in less than six months.
The startup provides bricks and mortar grocers with branded phone apps designed to help retailers gather highly customer data and earn advertising dollars, while shoppers can find what they’re looking for in the aisles, recall past purchases and skip lines by scanning products and paying with their phones.
"Our mission is to empower bricks and mortar retailers to move from analog to algorithms, as winners in this new era of commerce will be determined by how fast they can reinvent their business to capture shoppers digitally and monetise those digital relationships," says Henry Kim, Co-founder and CEO at Swiftly.
"We are grateful to BRV Capital for their support that will enable us to turn today's bricks and mortar retailers into tomorrow's omnichannel leaders."
"As e-commerce continues to surge, competition and technical complexity will make it harder than ever for bricks and mortar retailers to stand out to consumers," says Brian Lee, Partner at BRV Capital.
"Swiftly is enabling retailers to lead the next inflection point in e-commerce and digital advertising by harnessing the power of their first-party data, analytics and personalisation to supercharge their shopping experience and retail media offerings to drive margin rich topline growth.”
"We see an incredible opportunity for Swiftly to step into what we see as a 20-year lag in technology in the retail sector,” says Kwan Yoon, CIO at BRV Capital.
“The retail industry has long been slow to adopt new technology as the legacy analogue systems they were built on have had little ability to integrate. This lag in innovation has led to an inequitable advantage for just a few retail giants worldwide.”
“Our investment in Swiftly marks our commitment to assist retailers around the globe, close the gap and drive a more equitable and stronger retail market worldwide."
