Taking advantage of changes in the economy, technology and consumer behavior, retail ecommerce management platform CommerceIQ, announced the closing of its $115 million Series D funding. Their latest round moved the company into elite unicorn status by surpassing $1 billion in total valuation.
CommerceIQ connects and automates data and decisions across the entire ecommerce stack, empowering their global brand clients to be part of the digital wave now underway. The ecommerce platform enables brands to optimize the top three retail ecommerce channels: Walmart.com, Amazon and Instacart, which account for 85% of all ecommerce.
Guru Hariharan founded CommerceIQ in 2012, leveraging his career path to successfully pioneer an ecommerce platform. Previously, he co-founded the Amazon WebStore and established Amazon’s first self-service B2B marketing channel, among other notable career endeavors. He holds a BE in Computer Engineering from the Delhi Institute of Technology, an MS in Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MBA from the Wharton School..
“Our mission is to empower brands to move from analog to algorithms. Winners in this new era of commerce will be determined by how fast they can reinvent their business from siloed and manual to fully connected and automated,” says Hariharan. “And our customers are winning big, with an average revenue growth of 18%, driven by real-time optimizations that boost share-of-voice (SOV), minimize out-of-stock (OOS), and prevent revenue leakage.”
Unicorn status gives a company bragging rights which CommerceIQ clearly has, capitalizing on a major void in ecommerce. The company’s comprehensive ecommerce solution resulted in a doubling of revenue, customers served, and global employees in 2021. Their 2200 global clients are valuing their ability to pull together category analytics, retail media management, sales management, and operations management.
With such tremendous growth in 2021 alone, the company’s funding surged. Its’ recent Series D round followed its $60 million Series C round in a matter of months, bringing their total raise to $175 million over the prior 12 month period. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led the round with participation from all existing institutional investors: Insight Partners, Trinity Ventures, Shasta Ventures, and Madrona Venture Group.
“We are beyond grateful to our investment partners for their support that will enable us to quickly scale and address the urgent needs of large consumer brands to unlock their full potential. By providing intelligent automation across the entire ecommerce stack,” says Hariharan. “CommerceIQ has become the go-to-resource for brands to grow their market share and profitability.”
The investment will be used to support CommerceIQ’s global expansion and to accelerate the development of its unified Retail Ecommerce Management Platform. Clients such as Kellogg’s and Johnson & Johnson use the platform daily to maximize incremental sales, category market share, and unit profitability
“As eCommerce penetration continues to surge, competition and technical complexity will make it harder than ever for brands to stand out online,” said Priya Saiprasad, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “We believe that CommerceIQ can provide companies with a substantial edge by harnessing the power of algorithms and automation to supercharge their online presence. We are delighted to partner with Guru and the team on their mission to help brands win in eCommerce.”
With funding in place CommerceIQ is now well-positioned to continue its global pursuit of retail ecommerce that is projected to reach $7.4 trillion in 2025.
