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Shippo, an IT e-commerce platform raises $45 million in funding

Shippo is an American software company that helps e-commerce businesses, online marketplaces, and platforms integrate shipping with multiple carriers through their API and web application. Shippo’s multi-carrier shipping API services peer-to-peer marketplaces like Mercari the shipping backend and enable ultimate flexibility on the front-end for customized customer experience. The company has recently raised $45 million in new funding, according to a company blog, and now it is valued at $495 million.

The company made a statement where it announces the fact that this has doubled its valuation in just the last 12 months.

According to Shippo 2020 is a “year of massive growth” for the company and says that during that time, it was able to double the total shipping spend on its platform and add three times the amount of growth compared to other companies.

The blog goes on to say that Shippo has been dealing with a “remarkably offline problem” in shipping even as most of the world’s businesses are slowly shifting more towards e-commerce. Shipping has been faced with a number of steps — physically packing boxes, finding shipping providers, and completing last-mile delivery, usually by people in the real world — all of which are done in an offline-first manner. Hence the company is on the lookout to improve its working for everyone with numerous updates including an out-of-the-box shipping experience to make that a default feature for companies’ customers, and a boost to international carrier coverage, along with universal connectivity.

The company is also planning to expand its business. It had recruited 80 new employees last year and further plans to hire 150 additional employees. Shippo has also opened a hub in Austin in addition to the one which is in San Francisco.

“Our vision is to build Amazon Prime for everyone else. We want to put SMBs at a competitive advantage by setting a new bar for SMB shipping.” Rina Hurst, tthe chief business strategy also mentioned certain trends in shopping that contactless shipping is on the rise given the global pandemic situation.

How to Sell on Bonanza Marketplace in 2021?

How to Sell on Bonanza Marketplace in 2021

Bonanza is quite trending as a marketplace for the sellers who really want to kick start their business in 2021. This online marketplace is inclined towards empowering the entrepreneurs while enabling them to give their small businesses a big prospect. Thus those who are thinking of starting their new e-commerce business for this year’s Bonanza are the right place to flock around. Being a beginner, the bonanza selling site can feel a bit difficult for you. However, it is not at all that much complicated like other selling sites to start your own business. Here is how do you do it:

What is a Bonanza Market?

The Bonanza market started with its online platform in 2007. The aim behind this start-up was to eliminate all the barriers of other marketing giants like eBay. It didn’t take Bonanza much time to flourish as an independent one in the market which is making up places for the small online sellers.  The market is highly seller-centric, which is gives its competitors tough competition.

It comes with a more simplified business prospect which helps the seller a lot to reach easily towards the global customer base. Moreover, the highly curated customization of business makes this platform more appealing that easily fits any of the business needs.

Bonanza online comes with automated inventory imports. Also, it comes with multiple products and service editing along with the custom campaign running with literally zero-efforts for the web stores to stand out as a significant one.

What Bonanza has to Offer?

  • Bonanza comes with a free listing of products with no monthly store fees at all. There are no hidden fees that come with it.
  • You can easily make your products go live with a simple one-click, and the company is going to take you for the mega buyer platforms.
  • Bonanza online takes complete responsibility for the initial promotion before you start selling.
  • After that, sellers get the full freedom to promote their brands to build up a healthy customer relationship.

What Place Bonanza is Holding in the Market?

Since we said earlier that Bonanza is very popular as a marketplace, you can simply turn to it to give your business a new and profitable start with Bonanza to shine out as a very independent and business persona. What makes it worthy enough for you to start selling?

Well, as per the survey, more than 50000 sellers of 2016 rated Bonanza as one of the most recommended marketplaces besides eBay, Etsy, Amazon, and other marketplaces. This means you can explore more and more customers for your brand to get a wholesome revenue rate.

In 2015 the company got its recognition as the Small Business of the Year and Best place to work, which makes it more reliable for the independent sellers.

In terms of Customer service and communication, Bonanza ranks much better than other marketplace giants out there.

In 2016, Entrepreneur 360 ranked Bonanza with the title of best privately-owned business place in America.

These reasons are enough to prove how promising Bonanza is in the marketplace. Thus turning towards Bonanza to start selling is undoubtedly very promising and profitable that can help you to leverage your online business.

How to Sell on Bonanza?

Before you start selling on Bonanza, the first thing you need to ensure is a store at Bonanza. Before you sell on Bonanza, you need to start a “booth”. Here you can easily display your items as per the categories to become visible with a storefront to your customers. Posting all your items under one store frond lets, you have the benefit of the terms and correlation along with better visibility.

People are going to browse through your products which is going to help them buy better. In case you link one product with the other one, the selling can be much higher and effective. Setting up a booth on Bonanza is much easier. Here is how you can do it thoroughly step by step:

Step 1: The first step is, of course, the Bonanza sign-in. You simply need to start by signing up with a new account on Bonanza. The registration comes totally free for Bonanza.

Step 2: Then, you need to start posting your products one after another that you want to sell.

Step 3: Now, you need to set-up your seller account.

Step 4: Now, you can simply confirm all your details here to activate your booth

Step 5: There is no need to repeat the process every time you add a new product. You can easily come back and edit the details.

Step 6: Now, you need to provide the shipping details for your Bonanza shop to arrange your logistics in the proper way.

Step 7: You have to include your account details so that you can arrange the payments within the scheduled time.

Step 8: Your booth is going to remain active as soon as you are not closing it on your own.

Step 9: Now, as you are living with your Bonanza shop, you need to enhance your efficiency in selling. You have to leverage your resources to focus on the improvisations of the product marketing so that you can get benefited from a better selling rate on Bonanza selling site.

What You can Sell on Bonanza?

Knowing only how to sell on Bonanza is now enough. You thoroughly need to know what you can sell on Bonanza and what you cannot. Bonanza works as a very efficient selling marketplace where the products can be listed as per various categories and brands. Since the site is highly buyer-centric, it checks on every possible area so that one can enjoy happy shopping here.

As a customer rash towards a specific category, the person can search products by applying filters to refine the product search and add the product to the cart as per need. Also, it very conveniently displays the top-selling items on Bonanza to boost up your sales in every possible way. Here is what you can sell on this market place:

Fashion Items

Bonanza comes with a very elaborated section for the clothing category. The fashion niche includes the items like clothing, shoes, vintage items, formal and wedding items, accessories. Each of the categories comes with the brand, size, color, price, and other subcategories. The fashion section is divided between men and women.

Health and Beauty

Health and beauty category comes with the bath and body supplies, hair care and fragrance items, health care and body supplements, make-up, nail, and skincare all fall under this category.

Home and Gardening

Bonanza has a very well-dedicated section for the home and garden supplies. This section includes the bedding and furniture essentials, bath essentials, home decor ranges, kitchen and dining supplies, appliances. Also, it includes yard and garden essentials and accessories. Each of the categories comes with the essential filters so that your products can become visible in a very effective way.

Jewelry

The jewelry section is very rich for the Bonanza. Here you can list your fashion jewelry, handcrafted, and another vintage, fine, and wedding jewelry.

Handbags

Bonanza has a dedicated section for the handbags. Here you can list your handbag with your brand mane. Since Bonanza deals with all the reliable brands from all over the world, it is going to build up a very good reputation for your bag store.

Collectibles and Art

Bonanza is a very profitable place to sell your collectibles and art items. Here you can add your art, antiques, crafts, pottery and glasses, sports memorabilia, and other art essentials that you want to sell.

Gadgets

In Bonanza, you can also sell multiple gadgets like mobile phones, tablets, cameras, digital goods, computers and tablets, DVDs, and movies. Watches and other essentials that you want to sell here.

Other Categories

In Bonanza, you can also sell the business and industrial supplies, baby books, electronics, toys, parts and accessories, pet supplies, tickets and experiences, sports goods, specialty services, and many more.

What can You not Sell on Bonanza?

Just like what you can sell on Bonanza you need to know what you cannot sell on Bonanza. In case you try to sell, the platform can block you. Here are the products that you should not try to   sell on Bonanza:

  • Adult contents
  • Animal and animal products and medications
  • Cosmetics
  • Automotive
  • Dietary supplements
  • Digital books and textbooks
  • Fake or imitation of items
  • Currency, coins, cash gifts, or gift cards
  • Licensed food and beverages
  • Drugs
  • Expired products
  • Illegal or unlawful items
  • Hazardous or dangerous items
  • Tobacco or nicotine
  • Weapons
  • Human parts or burial artifacts
  • Offensive materials
  • Gambling and lottery items.

What Conditions do You Need to Follow When You are Selling on Bonanza?

Being a seller, you are not above the law. Being a law-abiding citizen, you have to follow some of the conditions to business with Bonanza online. Here are some of the requirements that you need to meet when you are typing to become a seller on Bonanza:

  • You either need to be a major to do business with Bonanza, or you have to be under some of the guardians
  • You have to stick to your pricing commitments and with the elated discounts and coupons.
  • You need to be accountable for all the products and services you are selling on this platform.
  • Make sure you are using advertisement and campaign tolls judiciously.
  • You need to maintain a very healthy relationship with all the customers.
  • Make sure you are fulfilling all the tax-related formalities
  • Ensure that you are transparent with your shipping and return policies

What are the Seller’s Fees on Bonanza?

There is no particular fee for the list of products on Bonanza. It enables you with the opportunity to sell your products with your storefront display to your customers at simply no cost. You can pay whenever you earn.  When you touch the margin, the platform opts for charging some of the marginal fee based on the Final Offer value. The fee variety depends on the value of the order, whether it is less or more than the mark of $500.

FOR Foe FOV under $500, you have to pay for 3.5% of the FOv as per the standard booths and for more than $500 FOV. You need to pay for the 3.5% of the FOV along with the flat 1,5% of the amount more than $500. It comes with a minimum fee of $0.50

Frequently Asked Question

Does Bonanza come with the registration fee?

No Bonanza is totally free for registration and listing system. This is a very seller-centric platform that comes very easily for the listing. Any seller can easily opt for the free registration to reach out to the global customers and opt for selling.

Can I get any demo on how to sell on Bonanza?

Bonanza comes with very customized online and offline training facilities. While you start selling on Bonanza you can get the opportunity to know much about the modern and efficient business dynamics. Industry experts come forward to share their experience and knowledge, which helps the entrepreneurs grow more.

How do I get paid on Bonanza?

You can easily get paid using your PayPal or credit and debit card. You can use your major credit cards like Mastercard, Visa, Discover, JCB, or American Express.

Can I sell any used item on Bonanza?

Yes, you can easily use your Bonanza selling website to sell used, vintage, or other antique items.

Does Bonanza come with any app?

Yes, Bonanza does come with the Bonanza Sellers mobile app. It is very easy to manage your bonanza business. The app comes available with the Android app store. It is also coming for Apple and the other ways.

Conclusion

The Bonanza online is a very prospective marketplace that gives you a very profitable business with this one. You can easily use this platform if you want to become a newbie entrepreneur for a very effective business. All you need to do is you have to be very specific about what you are selling here and whatnot. Give your business a new start with Bonanza to get more and more profit while having your brand recognition.

Walmart opening digital doors to consumers marking a shift from super center to super-app

It was 33 years ago(1988) when in Washington, Missouri; the first Walmart Supercenter had opened its doors to the public. It was a huge physical store that sold almost everything from general merchandise to groceries, offering ample and free parking. It was also described as a different “super” concept by CEO Doug McMillon. This supercenter was a gamechanger – a one-stop, 24/7 shopping destination marked by Walmart’s everyday low price value proposition for the 90 percent of the U.S. population living within 15 minutes of a Walmart store. The Supercenter concept was a format and a strategy that helped catapult Walmart into becoming not only the largest retailer in the U.S. but also the largest purveyor of groceries in the country.

Moving Walmart from a “preferred destination” to the consumer’s “primary destination” is how he articulated the strategic relevance of the Walmart core: the “interrelated ecosystem” of physical and digital; the expansion of its third-party marketplace with Shopify; the focus on healthcare via Walmart Health centers; the investments in eCommerce, logistics, supply chain and inventory to match demand with supply and consumer fulfillment preferences.

Walmart is not the only one that is seeking a super app status with the consumer. This concept has become the strategy for many- from FinTech to BigTech to banks to telcos all around the world, all of those who want to be the consumer’s digital front door connecting them seamlessly and securely to the many adjacent ecosystems and for which payments is the key to unlocking those new commerce opportunities.

Moreover, digital payment options like PayPal and Google both have payment credentials that enable their users to engage in many different activities once consumers enter their digital front doors — including paying for purchases when shopping at Walmart and using Google Assistant to order and pay. hence, Walamrt super app users won’t have to move to any other apps for availing the feature of digital payments.

Groceries, for example, is an important category for revenue generation for Walmart, that drives more than of their sales. Hence, with the business taking a shift to the online platforms, the whole competitive dynamics of the grocery industry will also change — driven by a consumer who values her time and has a choice in how, where and when she goes grocery shopping. Including those consumers who once could only use food stamps in the store to make grocery purchases and now have online alternatives to do so.

This concept of the digital front door, a super app was one of those which half of all consumers already found appealing. With millions of users shifting digital when purchasing retail products, ordering food and groceries, and paying for everything digitally, Walmart’s evolution would be interesting to watch.

Along with growing e-commerce business, Sketchers gets showered with positive customer reviews

Although Sketchers experienced the same story as other retailers during the pandemic, a seismic shift to online shopping as its retail stores were closed—the way the shoe retailer tapped into its customer reviews is what sets it apart.

Most consumers never considered buying shoes online, so Skechers USA Inc. had to pivot and find a way to give consumers the confidence to make their purchases, says Tim Lakin, e-commerce merchandising manager. “Having an active feedback area dedicated on our site really helped out,” he says. “A dedicated fanbase and lots of reviews—that takes the place of the in-store experience.”

When the world was witnessing the peak of corona-virus, Sketchers had a 700% year-over-year increase in e-commerce orders from May through June. The retailer credits much of that to its customer reviews—powered by ratings and reviews platform Power Reviews.

Skechers.com has more than 340,000 product reviews with an average star rating of 4.6 out of 5, along with more than 8,000 customer images shared. Plus, in the U.S., Sketchers has reviews for 87% of its products with an average of 18.8 reviews per product—content that consumers have interacted with on more than 2.3 million occasions, the retailer says.

While its online sales have leveled off after the surge in the summer, the retailer is still growing its e-commerce business. The retailer went from e-commerce representing about 5% of its total revenue to about 15% at the end of 2020. During the summer, however, its e-commerce business represented close to 100%, Sketchers says.

Skechers’ ultimate purpose is to get to 30% e-commerce representation, although its offline stores are still doing well, Lakin mentions. Overall, Skechers grew its online sales 250% in 2020. To compare, its online sales grew just 60% in 2019, he says.

The retailer’s conversion rate also improved as it focused on reviews. In early 2020, its conversion rate was about 2.5-3%. “Conversion is never super impressive, but that was pretty good for what it was and we didn’t have a lot of exclusive products. We were content with what we had,” Lakin says.

Just like its online sales, its conversion rate skyrocketed from May through June to about 25-30%, he says. It slowed down after that but continues to stay elevated from where it was pre-pandemic after its re-platforming. Its conversion rate now remains at about 6%.

Moreover, with the emerging e-commerce platform, reviews have taken an even more prominent role on Skechers.com. For example, some product detail pages now feature headers that describe a shoe’s fit as many consumers are new to buying shoes online or are new to Skechers. “We try to give them as much peer content to get their right size. People who wear this normally fit into this,” Lakin says.

As the brand continues to go into the year, 2021 its aim is to keep capitalizing on customer reviews and enhancing its product detail pages. That means adding more icons that describe the shoe features and product images and highlighting customer input. Furthermore, the company wants to further strengthen its online presence.

“A really nice review base can do just as much as something like augmented reality,” Lakin says, “It’s not the company telling you, it’s the other people telling you, which has more creditability.”

Vivas births Curated.com by mixing concepts of social commerce and influencer marketing

Founder of curator.com, Eddie Vivas’s experience with LinkedIn taught him how crucial personal relationships can be, which he has applied to a new retail concept. Curated.com plays the role of a matchmaker with people interested in starting or taking a step in an outdoor sport equipped with carefully-vetted experts in that sport to mentor them on the journey. It is likely to be called by the name of concierge e-commerce. Just like a concierge, Curated.com’s experts know the lay of the land and match the consumer’s needs and personal preferences with what is available. moreover, they often get tipped for their expert advice as well.

The company’s version of concierge e-commerce is a mixture of social commerce and influencer marketing, both integrated together in the right proportions and with an important twist.

“Just because you have a ton of Instagram followers doesn’t mean you’re very good expertise. It means you’re good at posting photos.” Vivas says. “We provide true experts who give you good advice in a way that doesn’t exist on the internet today or in traditional retail. Curated.com is what social commerce and influencer marketing could be.

Currently, curated.com is focused on outdoor sports. However, Vivas has his eyes on other aspects where expert advice is needed. He further asserts the fact that his goal is to enter into every category where consumers can leverage advice. “My long-term vision is that for a lot of basic purchases that you don’t have to think a lot about, you can to Amazon. But when you are buying things that really matter, that you are going to spend time on and invest in, that’s where we will be” he mentions.

Before the company got any customers, Curated.com had to get experts like Jake Parker, who literally raised on skis in Montana.

Curated.com is a place as Vivas dreamed of, where he could give unprejudiced advice and guidance in equipment selection that fits the customer’s needs, goals, and budget. Whenever the customers come onto the site, they are asked a series of questions to develop a profile of their skill in the particular sport or what they are looking for, what they want to achieve, and also their budgetary constraints. By understanding what the customer wants, Curated.com can match them with the most suitable expert.

Today, curated.com has over a million customers with its cohort of experts with revenues increasing 300% in 2020 alone. When asked if this huge influx of business might be triggered by the pandemic and that business would return to a more moderate pace once it resolves, Vivas is convinced Curated.com is onto something big.

To tap into more opportunities for freelancers, LinkedIn develops a new service “Marketplaces”

With its prime motive of linking people/users to opportunities during the pandemic season, LinkedIn is reportedly developing a new freelance marketplace platform that will enable businesses to find, connect with, and also pay freelancers on the platform itself.

As per a report, “LinkedIn is developing a new service called Marketplaces to let its 740 million users find and book freelancers, pitting it against publicly traded firms such as Upwork and Fiverr, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.”

This process also includes the development of a digital wallet that would facilitate payments on the platform. This step could also play a role in LinkedIn’s expanded plans to incentivize content creators so that they keep posting on the platform.

The freelance platform which LinkedIn is thinking of developing could dramatically expand the platform’s utility and further embed it as a key platform for HR operations – if everything goes according to the plan.

However, this isn’t the first effort by LinkedIn to provide connection tools for freelance and gig workers. The platform already has its “ProFinder” which is a kind of freelance connection tool. This feature enables anyone to search for relevant freelancers by topic, and connect with them for projects.

Users can have their profiles displayed for relevant job offers by activating the Showcase services feature on their LinkedIn profile, which makes sure that their profile will be shown up for relevant projects and queries.

Through the new feature into the world of freelancing, a whole new set of opportunities could be availed. Due to the rising WFH trend, businesses can now employ people from anywhere and they are no longer restricted by locality. With geography no longer being a limitation, there is a much broader pool of freelancers to choose from, which could see more businesses looking to contract workers for more purposes.

If LinkedIn succeeds to tap into it, it can provide direct connection options and that could be a big winner for the platform, while also expanding opportunity for the app’s hundreds of millions of users. It would not only boost user engagement but also add more advertising opportunities by giving freelancers the means to pay to promote their services on the marketplace. There’s a range of benefits here, while it would be a big undertaking for LinkedIn to challenge the established players in the market if it can ensure that it provides quality. However, if everything leads in the right direction, LinkedIn would make a more essential business platform.

Shopify stands Number 5 as an e-commerce platform; doubles its online sales in Q4

Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify Inc stated that it has plans to take advantage of “unknown opportunities” in 2021 in order to put innovation and expansion into new markets to full gear. However, it warned that its growth rate will slow down as per its year-end earnings report.

Gross merchandise value—the measure of product sales flowing through Shopify’s platform—was $41.1 billion in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, up 99.5% from $20.6 billion. Increasing demand for online shopping during the global pandemic boosted these sales. Full-year GMV went up to 96.0% to $119.6 billion from $61.0 billion the prior year.

Although the revenue will notice an increase in its figure but not as fast as in 2020 when it increased 85.6% to $2.9 billion from $1.6 billion the prior year, the company said Wednesday. It didn’t give specific guidance on earnings for the current year. Once consumers are vaccinated, they may return to physical stores and rely less on e-commerce, Ottawa-based Shopify said.

Shopify is also investing in funds in product marketing and in-country sales teams in some countries, such as Austria, France, and Belgium, where it already has a good establishment, president Harley Finkelstein said on a conference call. But Shopify intends to take a “meticulous and very strategic approach” to international expansion. “Some other countries that we have on our radar, we don’t think it’s the right time to go really deep. That will happen in the future,” he further added.

Shopify stands on Number 5 as an e-commerce platform that supports and provides services to  37 Top 1000 retailers, Amazon, Reflaunt, Fabric being few among them.

  • Amazon has recently acquired Selz, an Australian start-up e-commerce platform that helps small businesses create their own websites much the way Shopify does.

Related: In the competition to Shopify, Amazon acquires online platform Selz

  • Resale technology company Reflaunt raised $2.7 million in pre-Series A funding this week, led by the investment arm of luxury fashion distributor MadaLuxe Group. Reflaunt allows brands to resell their own pre-owned products through marketplaces once customers are ready to part with those goods, using Reflaunt to manage both taking in those products for quality checks and listing them on marketplaces.
  • E-commerce platform provider Fabric raised $43 million on Feb. 9, led by Norwest Venture Partners. It consists of a “headless” system, which separates back-end systems like product databases from front-end systems that customers interact with, allows customers to plug Fabric’s 32 applications in where needed, and do it quicker than older products.
  • E-commerce technology provider Pipe17 raised $8 million to fund team expansion and marketing efforts. Pipe17 provides automation software that connects various elements of an e-commerce operation, including e-commerce platforms, fulfillment software, financial systems and other software services to ensure all elements are working with the same information. GLP Partners led the round.

Walmart seen as a potential competition to Amazon due to its growing omni-channel presence

Considering the fact that Walmart, the largest retailer on earth just delivered its highest-ever sales for the quarter or its crucial digital revenues are surging up by nearly 70 %, or that it was raising funds, exiting slow-growth markets, and seeking greener pasture, even though the Investors expressed their displeasure because they were having none of it.

However, the insides of Walmart, let everybody ( investors and rivals) know that this game is not yet over and that its omnichannel presence poses a tough competition to Amazon. Moreover, the odds are also in Walmart’s favor.

Walmart CFO, Brett Brigs deems that this is the time to play an even more aggressive offense. He believes that they are winning and they also intend to keep pushing the ball aggressively down the field. He also indirectly mentioned a planned 30 percent increase in capital expenditures this year of more than $14 billion, which will primarily be deployed in the U.S. to support growth and efficiency initiatives.

Walmart’s strategy is nearly identical to the Amazon playbook, except for 11,000 gigantic differences: Walmart’s global network of brick-and-mortar stores, which have become invaluable cogs in the modern omnichannel machine. Not only is Walmart investing more in pick-up and delivery, but it’s constantly adding other services — like vaccines, money transfers, and dental care — which bring in more customers, who more often than not end up buying something else.

While investors might be feeling impatient with the fact that Amazon has steadily grown over the past decade to be four times larger than Walmart, management at the self-titled “low-cost leader” is stressing that the retailer is on a multi-year journey of modernization. “Over the next few years, we expect Capex to be around 2.5 to 3 percent of sales,” Briggs said, noting that was only about half as costly as the company’s Supercenter rollout phase in the ’90s.

Briggs after pointing out to 4 percent top-line growth at a company that just did half a trillion in sales, believes that a year or so of transition, these investments should put us in a position for 4-plus percent sales growth and [even higher] operating income growth rates

As much as Walmart is hustling to leverage its store count advantage, where 90 percent of Americans live within 10 miles of a location, Amazon is equally committed to compressing delivery times to get goods to people’s homes sooner, while convincing more businesses to sell goods on its platform. To facilitate that strategy, Amazon announced this week that it is acquiring Australian eCommerce platform Selz, which specializes in helping small to mid-size businesses (SMBs) to bridge the digital divide by processing payments and selling more merchandise.

Related: In the competition to Shopify, Amazon acquires online platform Selz

Amazon Air is growing its business with the potential of resembling an airline

Amazon is set for expanding its business in the coming spring and to double in size between Might 2020 and June of this 12 months, laying the additional groundwork for Amazon Air to rival the likes of carriers FedEx and UPS, in keeping with research.

The airline currently has 10 planes registered for it that aren’t presently flying, some of which need to be converted to freighters. There are also four more slated to join the fleet soon. Amazon currently makes a total of 140 flights per day ay and is increasing its fleet, signaling a “progress spurt this spring,” mentioned the report issued Tuesday by DePaul College’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Growth. “As new airplanes are added to the fleet, we anticipate the variety of flights will develop to 160+ by June 2021,” in keeping with the report. “If it reaches this milestone, Amazon Air could have roughly doubled in dimension within the 13 months between Might 2020 and June 2021.”

According to a study by DePaul Univerisity’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, Amazon Air will see its number of flights grow to over 160 by June, which would represent a doubling since May of last year. Between early September 2020 and February 2021, Amazon Air expanded its in-service fleet of registered planes from 52 to 59, a 13.5 percent increase, and the total fleet of registered planes from 56 to 68, a 21.4 percent increase.

Amazon’s air cargo fleet is a crucial part of the corporate’s technique to fulfill its more and more two-day supply targets. The corporate quietly started testing out air cargo operations in Wilmington, Ohio, in 2015 as a part of an undertaking below the code name “Aerosmith.” Since then, Amazon Air has grown quickly, significantly in the course of the coronavirus pandemic.

When the 11 Boeing jets are in service by the top of 2022, Amazon could have a fleet of greater than 85 planes. That is a far cry from FedEx, which has 679 planes, and UPS‘ fleet of 572 owned, leased, or chartered planes. Although it’s difficult to get an accurate read on the size of Amazon Air’s fleet because of the lack of disclosures from the company, and some analysts have noted that there’s a large amount of cargo moving on planes not registered to Amazon Air, specifically with routes going outside the U.S. The company has said it had 81 planes total.

Nonetheless, analysts believe Amazon’s progress trajectory may set it on a collision course with main shippers. Morgan Stanley has predicted Amazon could potentially leverage its end-to-end logistics operations to supply companies to outdoor events as quickly as this 12 months.

Related: Amazon didn’t lease but this year bought airplanes into its collection of air cargo family

People starting to loosen up their pockets since US non-store sales boost the highest in the last 7 months

It was in the month of January that the U.S. retail sales boosted by the most over the span of the last seven months, beating all estimates and suggesting fresh stimulus checks helped spur a rebound in household demand following a weak fourth quarter. The value of overall sales increased 5.3% from the prior month after a 1% decline in December, Commerce Department figures showed Wednesday. It was the first monthly gain since September and all major categories showed sharp advances.

Last month, consumer spending through non-store channels grew 29.0% over January 2020, according to a Digital Commerce 360 analysis of the Commerce Department’s advance monthly figures released Wednesday. Numbers exclude estimated fuel sales. That’s the highest-ever growth registered for the month of January and more than 10 percentage points higher than the runner-up of 18.0% in January 2000. It also is nearly 3.5 times higher than the 8.3% growth recorded in January 2020.

Non-store sales—which are mainly online but also include other sales such as orders through call centers, catalogs, door-to-door visits, and vending machines—don’t align perfectly with spending accounted for in the pure e-commerce figures that the agency releases quarterly.

January’s retail performance was fueled by continued gains in the online sector, although e-commerce’s impact was smaller than prior COVID-19 periods. Growth in the non-store channel accounted for more than half—50.6%—of all retail gains for the month.

As Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Retail Federation says, “We expected retail spending to ramp up in January thanks to the latest round of stimulus checks and better COVID trends, and it clearly did. There were none of the falloffs in spending that we often find post-holiday, and the increase was even better than expected. There is plenty of purchasing power available for most consumers.”

With confidence growing thanks to the availability of COVID-19 vaccines plus states and local governments beginning to remove restrictions on economic activity, Kleinhenz says he expects consumer spending to build on this momentum going forward.

“The strength and composition of retail sales (specifically the preference toward discretionary categories) is an encouraging signal that consumers’ aggressive saving patterns from 2020 are starting to ease—a development which, if continues, could unleash a torrent of pent-up demand in 2021,” says Carl Riccadonna and Yelena Shulyatyeva, Bloomberg economists.

 

Winter storms become a business blockade for Walmart; shuts down more than 400 stores temporarily across few parts of the US

With the temperatures falling down by the considerable number of degrees and winter weather blanketing much of the country with fluffy snow or a fresh sheet of ice, millions of homes have been left stranded without power. Moreover, hundreds of Walmart and Sam Club stores across 25 states have also been forced to close.

For the purpose of helping the customers to navigate the closures, Walmart has issued an interactive map.  Walmart said 456 stores and clubs are closed as of midday Tuesday. Other retailers, including Kroger and Target, have been impacted as well since they spanned over a large part of the Midwest and Southeast. A majority of them were located in the states of Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The severe weather has disrupted service at FedEx’s hub in Memphis and caused package delays across the U.S.Conditions were supposed to drag on, even as the storm system moved toward the Northeast, bringing icy conditions to New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. A new storm developing in the Midwest was also set to bring more ice to Texas and more snow to other U.S. states.

“Due to winter storms in many areas of the US, we’re closing some locations for the safety of our associates and customers,” Walmart said in a tweet on Monday.

“The safety of our associates and customers is our top priority. Walmart’s Emergency Operations Center monitors winter storms and other potential disasters in real-time,” the retail giant said in a post on its website. “We assess the status of our facilities and will continue to operate as long as it is safe to do so. We pay close attention and follow local and/or state guidelines.”, they added.

As of Monday, more than 3.6 million Texans were without power after the Electric Reliability Council of Texas started rolling blackouts across the state. Other Texas-based power providers have warned that demand for electricity during the storm has exceeded supply. The blackouts have since extended beyond Texas to Kansas, Missouri, and 12 other states. The storm is now causing tornadoes in parts of Florida and Georgia, and three people were killed by a twister in North Carolina. The winter weather is expected to move through the Northeast on Tuesday, bringing up to 10 inches of snow to New England.

In the competition to Shopify, Amazon acquires online platform Selz

Amazon, a multinational technology corporation based in Seattle has recently closed a deal to acquire a 7-year-old Australian startup – Selz, a company that enables e-commerce firms to advance digital sales. In simple words, it is a startup that assists entrepreneurs that sells products online. The deal signals Amazon’s continued focus on third-party sellers as it faces potential competition from Shopify, in January but it has not announced the acquisition. The deal was first noted in a blog post published last month by Selz CEO and Founder Martin Rushe.

The terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed yet. A spokeswoman for Amazon said the deal, which Selz announced on its website about a month ago, has been completed and nothing will change for Selz’s merchants or their customers.

“We have signed an agreement to be acquired by Amazon and are looking forward to working with them as we continue to build easy-to-use tools for entrepreneurs,” wrote Rushe. “Nothing is changing for our customers at this time, and we’ll be in touch with customers as and when we have further updates.” Selz’s founders mentioned.

Founded in Sydney (2013), Selz serves as an online platform providing various services that provide technology to help small businesses operate e-commerce sites and process payments. It’s a market dominated by Canada-based Shopify, which has seen its stock soar amid the pandemic with the acceleration of e-commerce and more people launching online businesses. The private company employs more than 30 people with total funding of $11 million, according to data firm PitchBook. Previous backers include Macdoch Venture and Adcock Private Equity, PitchBook said.

Shopify helps power more than one million businesses across 175 countries, including large brands such as Allbirds, Heinz, and Staples Canada. It also has a bevy of partnerships with other large platforms and retailers; last week it launched its payment processing system Shop Pay on Facebook and Instagram.

Shopify and Amazon are different — customers don’t buy products on Shopify.com, for example — but in many ways, they are competitors as both caters to small businesses and online merchants. However, Amazon has heightened its efforts to match fast-growing Shopify, which also aids small merchants in creating online shops. Last year, Amazon created a secret team named “Project Santos” to replicate part of Shopify’s business model.

Third-party sellers help Amazon offer a wide selection of products to customers on its marketplace, beyond items sold by Amazon itself. Those sellers are responsible for more than 50% of the tech giant’s “total paid units,” a percentage that has steadily increased over the past decade.

Mastercard teams up with Indian Razorpay to enhance and grow SMB’s digital payment systems

Mastercard, an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in New York made an announcement in a press release stating that it is partnering with Indian FinTech Razorpay to advance digital payments for small and midsized businesses (SMBs). Razorpay is a financial technology headquartered in Bangalore, India that was founded by Harsil Mathur and Sashank Kumar in 2014. The company provides payment solutions that allow businesses to accept, process, and disburse payments. It is the only payments solution in India that allows businesses to accept, process, and disburse payments with its product suite. It gives you access to all payment modes including credit card, debit card, net banking, UPI, and popular wallets including JioMoney, Mobikwik, Airtel Money, FreeCharge, Ola Money, and PayZapp. It also recently launched a new business-to-business tool in multiple languages to connect customers with third-party companies.

The merger will enable Indian startups and SMBs not only to inculcate technology into their operations but also speed-up digitalization while also maintaining business continuity and preparing for alternatives to cash payments. Moreover, both companies are determined to work to advance the acceptance of digital payments in India to help merchants and payment aggregators grow their businesses. One of their initiatives of both the companies would be making recurring payments more accessible to businesses and onsumers by creating seamless onboarding solutions for bill payments, digital content platforms, and other subscription services

Before the pandemic took hold, Mastercard said some 90 percent of India’s retail payments were conducted in cash.

Amitabh Tewary, chief innovation officer at Razorpay believes that through this tie-up they are going through one of the biggest transformations in Indian financial history. The FinTech revolution will significantly change the payment and banking experience of consumers and businesses now and in the years to come. “New businesses are evolving every day with different payment and banking needs and catering to a different set of consumers and markets,” he mentioned in a press release.

One of the goals of this partnership is to intended to surge digital adoption in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities including Ahmadabad, Kanpur, Chandigarh, Patna, Dehradun, Pondicherry, Pune Madurai, Baroda, Nashik, and Trichy. Tewary said that technology will help SMBs better develop resiliency.

Mastercard is excited to extend its partnership with Razorpay, India’s youngest unicorn, on a strategic level,” said Rajeev Kumar K, senior vice president of market development for South Asia at Mastercard. The company aims to make merchants across India digitally equipped and welcomes the fresh thoughts and technology that Razorpay will bring to help achieve this goal. Mastercard is committed to developing safe, secure, and more convenient ways to make payments with its technology and expertise and is confident this partnership will deliver that and more,” he added.

Related: Mastercard tests its pilot cloud-based set up for contactless payments

San Francisco based platform, Fast adds authentication to its payment process providing a holistic solution

Fast, a San Francisco-based platform that enables users to easily and securely access the world without passwords knows what it wants to do and does it quickly. The goal of the company is to make it easy as possible for users to be able to buy things online. Although we live in a world where e-commerce and online businesses are thriving in general, we still are using a lot of older methods of authentication and login. That’s why this startup comes into the picture providing one of the safest ways of securing passwords and user information.

Fast is a combination of essential digital-first elements. Unlike some companies that either focus on the authentication part of a transaction or on the payments side, Fast aims to bring both pieces together for a holistic solution. What that means, is that once you’ve logged into your Google account and been verified there, you shouldn’t have to take the time to re-authenticate when you then buy something with your PayPal account. Fast is looking to use the data it gathers to enable better post-purchase experiences, such as delivery tracking or the creation of an order dashboard, as well as future possibilities like post-purchase support and even subscription management and up-selling with recommendations for other products.

Now with new capital of $100 million to work with Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer Allison Barr Allen said that she is looking forward to expanding the platform that was launched in September to new people and places.  The company’s core product, Fast Checkout, offers a one-click purchasing process that does not require a password or manual identification inputs for every order. Shoppers are automatically signed up for Fast after their first purchase and can check out from individual product pages rather than filling a cart at the end of the order. all they are trying to do is scale consumers across businesses and make it easier to engage both for the company as well as the users. This means that businesses will be able to procure more business since there will be less friction for consumers, and then consumers will be more likely to engage.

The platform has also been compared to the experience Amazon provides. Like Amazon, Fast’s solution combines login and checkout and then adds authentication into the payments process. When shoppers use Fast, they automatically create a profile with that retailer without a need for a username or password. By offering the technology outside of Amazon, in a sense, Fast is democratizing one-click checkout.

“Amazon knows who you are, they have a history of all your purchases, they have your payment information stored and have all your addresses set up,” she said. “At Fast, we bring a lot of those same tools and technology to other businesses on the web, so they can still have a relationship with their consumers, and a lot of that goes to identity and payments.”

Like most businesses tied to rising e-commerce, Fast has seen many changes brought on by the pandemic.“We were really bullish on the segment and sector before COVID, but I think COVID definitely escalates a lot of the tech investment that these brands are doing where before it was nice to have, suddenly with COVID it becomes a need to have like it’s required to survive as a business,”  Barr Allen stated.

While Fast is happy to work with larger merchants, most of its business is currently focused on serving small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that are often scrambling to do everything themselves.

 

 

 

Shopify gives Facebook and Instagram an e-commerce push; launched Shop Pay

Shopify,  a multinational e-commerce giant had made an announcement of a new merger with Facebook. Since Shopify offers various online retailers a suite of services including payments, marketing, shipping, and customer engagement tools, its new integration with Facebook will allow Shopify users to purchase items via its ‘Shopify Pay’ payment system when buying in Facebook and Instagram Shops.

Shop pay is an accelerated checkout solution that enables Shopify customers to save their email address, credit card, and shipping and billing information in the app so that they can complete their transactions faster whenever they’re directed to the Shopify checkout. This feature has already seen significant usage accounting for more than 137 million orders in 2020.

Due to this integration, both Facebook and Instagram shops could be advancing towards facebook’s e-commerce push by providing more ways for users to revert to a transaction process that they trust when buying through its platforms. In addition, more retailers could be lured to create their Facebook and Insta shops – according to Shopify, checkout on Shop Pay is 70% faster than a typical checkout, while it also sees a 1.72x higher conversion rate.

As explained by Shopify:

“We’re expanding Shop Pay – the fastest and most secure way to shop online – to all Shopify merchants selling on Facebook and Instagram. With Shop Pay now available as a fast and secure payment option on Facebook, people also get access to industry-leading order tracking and carbon offsets from their deliveries.”

“Consumers on Instagram and Facebook will see Shop Pay as a payment option in Facebook Pay. Shop Pay pre-populates their details and speeds them through the most efficient and secure way to pay on the internet – directly on Instagram and Facebook.”

E-commerce is the next big stage for both Instagram and Facebook though it could be held for different purposes for either platform. By incorporating shopping behavior, Facebook is looking to tap into the rising reliance on in-home shopping, accelerated by the pandemic, as a means to expand its utility, while in-app transactions could also play a crucial role in the platform’s expansion into new regions. On Instagram, mostly there exists a higher degree of product discovery than happens within the app. This way, it is made easier to jump from browsing to buying, hence making shopping a much more habitual behavior and changing the way people use the app. Shopify Pay also offers order tracking, providing an extra level of assurance.

The opportunities on both fronts are significant, and adding more payment options – especially established, trusted processes – could prove to be a major step.

Uber Eats in race with Uber itself in context of Uber earnings

Uber Technologies, Inc., commonly known as Uber, is an American technology company that offers services including ride-hailing, food delivery (Uber Eats), package delivery, couriers, freight transportation.  This company is one of those which is uniquely suited to the digital-first economy. This was proved with the company’s earnings since its fourth-quarter and full-year results took the measure of Uber’s business model and the potential impact of recent acquisitions.

A summary of accounts shows the friction between Uber and Uber Eats and places it in the context of the company’s future, which will include recent acquisitions by Drizly and Postmates. Overall, Uber reported a net loss of $6.76 billion for 2020, compared with an $8.5 billion loss in 2019. However, revenue for the year went down from 14% to 411.13 billion.  Perhaps the best way to look at the company’s numbers is through the lens of gross bookings: Delivery Gross Bookings grew 128 percent over 2019, and Mobility Gross Bookings declined 47 percent as the digital shift kept people away from traveling and away from groceries and restaurants. In December, according to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, the annual delivery bookings hit an annualized rate of $44 billion.

Related – Uber creates opportunity through movement; acquires Drizly, alcohol delivery startup for $1.1 B 

Related- Uber seeks investors for its growing interest in sidewalk delivery bots and also start kick the start-up

Khosrowshahi is optimistic about Uber’s future more than ever despite the uncertain external environment. He believes that he has established not only the world’s largest mobility platform with a leading position but also the world’s largest food delivery platform as well in just a matter of 5 years. This food delivery platform has been made big even outside of China which is growing substantially faster than the category, and which they are using to demand to expand into high potential adjacencies. These two platforms are synergistic and are powered by many common components.

Despite the dip faced in 2020, the company is in the hopes that the digital shifts common components and the expected pandemic recovery will converge to bring the mobility business back to 2019 levels and will continue to drive the “bring it to me” economy.

For Uber (mobility side) a few features have been added to the service during 2020 to show some traction like-

  • Uber Reserve- service offering premium reservation opportunities.
  • Uber transit- service enables riders to plan and travel trips across transit platforms.

Uber for Business bookings grew 45 percent in Q4 over Q3. Total platform customers across all mobile and delivery grew to 93 million in Q4. On average, the monthly active consumer spent over $60 across more than 5 transactions on Uber’s platform.

However, it is the Uber Eats service that has all the excitement on the call. Restaurants now on the platform topped 600k, with 100k coming from the Postmates acquisition, which closed on Dec. 1. Grocery and non-food deliveries grew to a $1.5 billion rate for the year. Gross Bookings and Revenue grew triple digits year-over-year, with EMEA up 144 percent and the U.S. and Canada up 142 percent. Khosrowshahi said he welcomed the intense competition in the delivery space.

Khosrowshahi also addressed the Drizly acquisition, noting that the regulatory environment for the company is different from state to state. “We saw that the Drizly team built fast and built profitably,” he said. “So I think putting together like a product that has a first-class merchant base that is highly penetrated and introducing them to the giant audience that we have is a pretty powerful combination.”

TikTok planning to dive into e-commerce and goes in fierce competition with Facebook

TikTok appears to be about to skip a desktop experience “and go straight into commerce”. In simple words, TikTok is planning an aggressive expansion into e-commerce in the US which will set the platform in cutthroat competition with Silicon Valley giant Facebook.

The china owned video/content creation app has also informed advertisers of a number of new features it is planning to release in 2021. One of its newest tools is to let its most popular users share links to products and automatically earn commission on any sales. It is also coming up with a feature of  “live-streamed” shopping, a mobile phone version of television shopping channels, where users can buy goods with a few taps. It’s seeking to let brands show their catalogs, according to the report by the Financial Time.“It’s old-school affiliate marketing,” one senior advertising executive said, adding that video makers would be able to link to any products they liked, even if they were not formally sponsored by the brand.

Last week, TikTok announced its first major deal with an advertising agency, WPP, hat offers access and marketing capabilities on the viral-video platform to the London-based advertising agency’s network and clients.

One thing the platform is still aiming for is the ability for brands to showcase catalogs of their products on the platform. TikTok is already in partnership with an e-commerce platform Shopify, further into competition with Facebook since last year only, this platform had introduced a new feature on its photo-sharing application (Instagram) called Instagram Reels which was a copy of TikTok’s scrollable videos.

Some advertisers have been cautious about TikTok, suggesting that its current advertising system remains a work in progress. “The product and the content have not matured into a place where sophisticated advertisers really want to commit,” one ad agency executive said. Two people said the platform had planned this year to further develop its self-service ad platform, which allows brands to place their own ads easily online rather than manually with a sales representative, bringing it in line with larger rivals. It was also aiming to improve its tools for ad targeting, including user tracking, the people said.

Premium organic juice company, Uncle Matt’s offers DTC by launching an e-commerce platform

The nation’s oldest organic orange juice company, Uncle Matt’s that offers premium quality organic products opens a new e-commerce site. That site has made it possible to sell mixed bundles of the company’s products to become more to consumers. The main reason for the company launching an e-commerce site was to make available to consumers those brands/products which they could not find easily or whose favorite stores did not carry the Uncle Matt’s products they wanted. E-commerce allows the organic juice brand to offer consumers a wider variety than they might find in stores and reach remote areas where its products might not otherwise be available. The launch of the e-commerce site also complements Uncle Matt’s Organic’s nationwide retail presence.

CEO Matt McLean stated that customers showed an interest in buying Uncle Matt’s products in areas where it’s not yet available. Also, e-commerce made sense because of changing buying patterns created by the COVID-19 crisis—which generated a surge in demand for grocery e-commerce, as shoppers become wary of entering stores, he says.

Direct-to-consumer e-commerce enables Uncle Matt’s to serve remote areas where its juices aren’t in supermarkets and offer a better variety to shoppers whose local store might carry just two or three of its roughly 20 products. Another advantage of getting online as mentioned by the CEO, Matt McLean is that online sales allow Uncle Matt’s to get new products to market faster than it could by selling them wholesale. For example, he cited the brand’s Ultimate Immune product—made with orange juice, elderberry juice, and zinc—which launched during the pandemic and is currently available on the e-commerce site. “It takes a while for a supermarket, through a review cycle, to actually put it on the shelf,” McLean says. Sometimes, the process can take six to nine months, so offering the product on its website allowed the brand to get Ultimate Immune in consumers’ homes a lot quicker than that, while it waits for orders from supermarkets, he says.

Currently, shipping is available to most of the East Coast, with plans to expand nationwide. The online store brings organic orange juice, lemonade, and functional beverage bundles directly to consumers’ doors in one to two days via FedEx. Because products are perishable, they are not shipped to P.O. boxes.

Driverless robotaxi startup, Pony.ai secures $100 Million from major automobile players

Pony.ai, a safe and reliable autonomous driving technology globally, has landed big investments from Toyota and other major automobile players. It has raised $100 million in an extension of its series C round. The funds bring the company’s total raised to over $1 billion at a post-money valuation of $5.3 billion, up from $3 billion as of February 2020.

Some experts predict the pandemic will hasten the adoption of autonomous transportation technologies. Despite needing disinfection, driverless cars can potentially minimize the risk of spreading disease.

Former Baidu chief architect James Peng cofounded Pony.ai in 2016 with Tiancheng Lou, who worked at Google X’s autonomous car project before it was spun off into Waymo.  The pair’s vision o build level 4 autonomous cars — able to operate without human oversight under select conditions, as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers — for “predictable” environments, such as industrial parks, college campuses, and small towns, etc.  The company’s hardware systems use PonyAlpha, lidars, radars, and cameras to keep tabs on obstacles up to 200 meters from its self-driving cars. It is one of the few companies to have granted the license for autonomous vehicle testing in Beijing, China, and the US. These pilots have enabled them to build a strong technical and operational foundation to further expand and improve their service. In California, it has obtained a Robot-taxi operations permit from the California Public Utilities Commission. The only other companies to have secured such a license in California are AutoX, Waymo, and Zoox.

Last October, Pony.ai partnered with Via and Hyundai to launch BotRide, Pony.ai’s second public robot-taxi service after a pilot program (PonyPilot) in Nansha, China. BotRide enables riders and carpoolers to hail autonomous Hyundai Kona electric SUVs through apps developed with Via, sourcing from a fleet of 10 cars with human safety drivers behind the wheel. Pony.ai got into another agreement with Bosch in August to explore the future of automotive maintenance and repair for autonomous fleets.

Pony.ai has competition in Daimler, which in summer 2018 obtained a permit from the Chinese government that allows it to test self-driving cars powered by Baidu’s Apollo platform on public roads in Beijing. Fortunately for Pony.ai, it has partnerships with Chinese state-owned auto group FAW and GAC Group (a Guangzhou-based automobile maker) to develop level 4 robo-taxi vehicles. It also has a joint collaboration with On Semiconductor to prototype image sensing and processing technologies for machine vision.

Previous and existing investors in Pony.ai include video game publisher Beijing Kunlun Wanwei, Sequoia Capital China, IDG Capital, and Legend Capital. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board’s Teachers’ Innovation Platform led this latest round, with participation from Fidelity China Special Situations PLC, 5Y Capital, ClearVue Partners, Eight Roads, and others.

To expand and grow, Vivino, a wine marketplace and app raises $155 Million

Vivino, an online wine marketplace and wine app has recently raised funds amounting to $155 million as it expands into new countries and also for the purpose of adding staff and building out its wine-recommendation engine after more than doubling wine sales during the pandemic. As of 2021, Vivino had a wine database containing more than 12.5 million different wines and had 50 million users

Founded in 2010 by Heini Zachariassen and Theis Søndergaard, Vivino had just started as an app for consumers to scan a wine bottle and view ratings and text reviews. However, with launching its marketplace in 2015, today it owns 700 independent wine businesses, such as wineries, from 14 different countries with plans to expand with the new funding. Within the app, consumers have a personal digital “cellar” where they can save wines they like for easy reference later. It also has an app that is available for download on Android and Apple devices that suggests wine based on price, pairings, or region and lets users buy it on its app. As of 2021, Vivino had a wine database containing more than 12.5 million different wines and had 50 million users. However, in today’s date, the wine sales on Vivino’s platform more than doubled in 2020 to $265 million as consumers shut out of bars and restaurants bought bottles online to drink at home.  That drove the San Francisco-based company to its first break-even annual performance.

 

The funds raised by the largest wine marketplace will enable Vivino not only to expand into new international markets including Mexico, Japan, Poland, and Portugal but also to add more employees by at least 50% to 300 people.

The round, the company’s first since 2018, was led by Swedish investors Kinnevik AB, Vivino said. Sprints Capital, GP Bullhound, and Creandum. AB also invested in the round, which brings Vivino’s total funds raised to $221 million. Zachariassen said the firm’s valuation rose substantially, though he wouldn’t disclose figures. However as stated y Zachariassen, the company doesn’t anticipate being profitable this year or next, and the company isn’t planning an initial public offering just yet.

“Vivino has claimed the position as the go-to wine utility for consumers all over the world, creating a strong community with network effects and rich data insights,” Kinnevik’s CEO Georgi Ganev said in the statement.

Similar to the Amazon.com Inc. marketplace, Vivino also owns some of its own wine inventory that it sells and ships directly to customers. Globally the breakdown of sales between the marketplace and its own sales is about 50-50, says LaNae Rueda, vice president of global customer experience. Since the foundation of Vivino is based on consumer tracking and rating the wine they like, Vivino has rich customer information about their preferences and can provide personalized recommendations.

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