Starring Constructor, Zilch, Waabi, and Droppe: six retail technology funding rounds you need to know about

RTIH rounds up six retail systems ventures who have recently secured significant investments in their businesses, including a major player in the Indian quick commerce market, fully driverless autonomous trucks, and an AI powered product discovery and search platform for enterprise e-commerce firms.

1. Zepto

Indian rapid grocery delivery platform, Zepto, is set to raise $650 million from a combination of existing and new investors, taking its valuation to approximately $3.5 billion.

Leading the funding round are Nexus Venture Partners and StepStone Group, both of whom are existing backers of Zepto.

They are joined by existing investor Glade Brook Capital and newbies including Avenir Growth, Lightspeed Venture Partners, DST Global, and Avra.

Nexus Venture Partners, along with its limited partner StepStone Group, will stump up a significant portion of the $650 million, making this its largest investment to date.

The cash will be largely used to expand Zepto’s presence to new cities and penetrate deeper into existing ones.

Founded by Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra during the Covid pandemic, Zepto is one of three primary players in the Indian quick commerce market, the others being Blinkit, owned by Zomato, and Instamart, owned by Swiggy,

It has a presence in Delhi, Chennai, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad.

2. Constructor

Constructor, an AI powered product discovery and search platform for enterprise e-commerce firms, reports a $25 million Series B round, bringing the company’s valuation to $550 million.

This marks a nearly triple valuation since its 2021 Series A and brings total funds raised to date to more than $85 million.

Sapphire Ventures led the round with participation from existing investor Silversmith Capital Partners.

With this new capital, Constructor will accelerate product development and innovation and continue its international expansion.

“In today’s competitive e-commerce environment, having a powerful AI search solution that can best capture shopper intent is crucial to driving topline revenues – yet until now, existing tech has remained rudimentary,” says Rajeev Dham, Partner at Sapphire Ventures, who will be joining as a board director.

“With more than a decade of experience in the field, Eli and the team at Constructor have developed a state-of-the-art, AI e-commerce search engine that has delivered best-in-class ROI for many household enterprise brands.”

“We are incredibly excited to partner with the team as they set a new standard in powering a hyper-personalised shopper experience.”

3. Droppe

Droppe, a Finnish company focused on the B2B distribution space, has closed a Euro 3.9 million seed funding round.

This was led by European early stage venture capital firm OpenOcean.

Miki Kuusi, Wolt’s Co-Founder, Ilkka Paananen, Supercell’s Co-Founder, Robert Gentz, Zalando’s Co-Founder and Marianne Vikkula, Wolt’s COO, also took part via Illusian Ventures, along with Lifeline Ventures, Droppe’s previous investor.

Droppe’s Source-to-Order platform promises businesses an easy way to source, order and manage supplies, such as safety, paper, workwear and packaging supplies for their operations. 

At the same time, enabling suppliers to serve and ship directly to customers at scale, it eliminates the need for intermediary storage, repackaging, and additional logistics when moving products from brands to businesses. 

The aim is to create shorter, more sustainable European supply chains, helping businesses achieve their sustainability goals.

4. Waabi

Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group, has participated in a $200 million Series B funding round for Waabi, a specialist in utilising generative AI for self-driving technology.

The funds will support Waabi’s deployment of fully driverless autonomous trucks in 2025.

Waabi has developed an AI system that is capable of reasoning and making decisions in various driving conditions and routes.

This solution, paired with Waabi World, a simulator where the self-driving system is trained and tested, aims to enable a safer, more efficient autonomous trucking solution that is highly capital efficient and scalable.

5. Zilch

PayTech firm Zilch has announced a £100 million securitised debt financing arranged by Deutsche Bank.

It says this will enable it to grow its business and accelerate the company’s ability to create and launch new products for a broader base of customers.

Zilch CEO and Co-Founder Philip Belamant says: "We’re thrilled to announce the financing as it marks a transformative step in Zilch’s journey.”

“With this new securitisation, we’re poised to triple sales volumes and achieve significant capital efficiencies as we continue to drive billions in commerce to our retail network and, in turn, hundreds of millions in savings and subsidies to our customer base.”

“This partnership not only provides an excellent opportunity for debt investors to join in our success, but it also enables us to accelerate the roll-out of our feature roadmap which will broaden wallet and market share.”

“We’re adding over 100,000 new customers every month, doubling revenue year over year, and this deal will allow us to build upon that momentum.”

6. Maxim AI

Maxim AI has secured a $3 million funding round led by Elevation Capital.

The round also saw participation from marquee angel investors including founders of Postman, Chargebee, Groww, Razorpay, and Media.net.

With the infusion of capital, Maxim has announced the general availability launch of its platform that helps enterprises test and rapidly ship AI products.

The startup was founded in 2023 by Google-Postman duo Vaibhavi Gangwar and Akshay Deo.

“Even though we are seeing tremendous value creation in the AI hardware and foundational model stack, for the benefits to be realised meaningfully up the value chain, we need the products built on top of the generative AI stack to be trustworthy and reliable,” they say in a press release.

“This makes evaluation a very critical piece of AI infrastructure. However, today there is no standardisation in the generative AI testing space unlike traditional software development.”

“That’s where Maxim comes in: with our users, we have become this very core piece of infrastructure that is powering high quality AI development, streamlining team collaboration, and saving development teams hundreds of hours per month.”

Akarsh Shrivastava, Principal, Elevation Capital, comments: “Maxim AI is addressing a crucial need in the evolving AI landscape. Their focus on creating a standardised, scalable evaluation infrastructure addresses a deep pain point for AI developers.”

“As the complexity and diversity of AI use cases continue to rise, Maxim's platform will play a critical role in ensuring trustworthy and reliable AI systems. We are super excited to partner with Vaibhavi and Akshay as they build Maxim into a critical piece of this AI catalysed paradigm shift we are going to see.”