Accel

EdgeDB raises $15M ahead of the launch of its cloud database service • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 7, 2022Posted in Accel, Apps, EdgeDB, Enterprise, funding, Nava Ventures, relational database, startup, StartupsNo Comments

EdgeDB, the startup looking to modernize databases for cutting-edge apps, today announced that it raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Nava Ventures and Accel. The new capital brings the startup’s total raised to $19 million, which CEO Yury Selivanov said will be used to boost headcount and launch the previously announced hosted version of EdgeDB’s database solution, EdgeDB Cloud. “Cloud, which in our case is a database-as-a-service, requires significant investment upfront to build a reliable and scalable infrastructure,” Selivanov told ZebethMedia in an email interview. “We plan on eventually introducing turn-key integrations with Vercel, Netlify, GitHub, GitLab, Sentry, DataDog and many other services, making EdgeDB Cloud the key component of future application stacks.” Selivanov co-founded EdgeDB with Elvis Pranskevichus in 2022, after co-launching a software development consultancy called MagicStack in Toronto in 2008. As they began to create bespoke tooling for clients, the founders came to the realization that they wanted to lead a purely product-driven company as opposed to a consulting firm. And so EdgeDB was born. EdgeDB’s product is fundamentally a relational database, or a collection of data items with predefined relationships between them. But Selivanov makes the case that EdgeDB “reinvents pretty much every concept” about relational databases, introducing its own high-level data model, a query language called EdgeQL, a low-latency network protocol and a set of tools to handle day-to-day operations like installing the database and making backups. Image Credits: EdgeDB “EdgeDB’s extensive feature set was always guided by solving the real pain points we observed the industry has with databases,” Selivanov said. “Technical decision-makers appreciate the low friction of building with EdgeDB compared to most other relational database products on the market.” EdgeDB competes with PlanetScale, Supabase and Prisma for dominance in the relational database market. At least one forecaster believes it could be worth $18.8 billion by 2026, growing nearly 40% from 2021. It’s been a rockier-than-anticipated road to revenue — while Selivanov told ZebethMedia in April that he expected EdgeDB would be generating revenue in Q4 2022, he now expects it won’t be until “late Q1 2023.” Selivanov blames that on the delayed launch of EdgeDB Cloud, which was originally set for 2022. But he stresses that EdgeDB’s 14-person team is heads-down, continuing to build out the database’s architecture and query language. “After successful launches of EdgeDB v1.0 and v2.0, we could easily demonstrate that people love the product and now is the right time to focus on the hosted version. Raising money at that point felt like the natural next step,” Selivanov said. “In the next release we plan to introduce a visual constructor for queries and a visualization UI for explaining queries performance … We will also be expanding the list of programming languages we natively support.” EdgeDB also has the advantage of backing from notable angels in the software dev space, including ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner, Firebase co-founder James Tamplin, ex-IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano, Netlify co-founder Mathias Biilmann and Sentry co-founder David Cramer. OpenAI co-founder and CTO Greg Brockman is another supporter, having invested in EdgeDB’s seed round this spring.

Accel backs startup offering ‘Amazon-grade’ commerce engine to online sellers around the world • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Accel, Amazon, Commerce, eCommerceNo Comments

Accel has backed a startup named Mason based in India and the U.S. that has built a commerce engine for sellers around the world to help them sell products online without paying the exorbitant ‘Amazon tax.’ The California-based startup, which has its R&D headquarters in Bengaluru, is claimed to allow sellers to have their D2C storefront ready with a 50% uplift in their margins from day one. It offers a no-code, plug-and-play solution to let sellers offer products online without requiring a large engineering team. Founded by Barada Sahu and Kausambi Manjita in 2020, Mason claims to have more than 1,000 customers and powers over 8,000 brands worldwide. While North America has been one of the strongest markets for the startup, it also serves clients in Singapore, Southeast Asia, Japan and India. “People are stuck with having forced to sell on Amazon. Ideally, as a brand, you want your own presence, but you’re unable to do that because it’s very hard. It almost feels like a technology problem,” Manjita said in an interview with ZebethMedia. Mason’s product dashboard Sahu and Manjita decided to build their offering for online stores while working at Walmart-owned Myntra. While developing a custom engine at the fashion e-commerce company, the duo realized the need for bespoke store engines to run online stores selling various products successfully. That brought Mason to its reality. Manjita is heading Mason’s product and customer experience, while Sahu looks after its revenues and growth. The startup is aimed at small and medium businesses that already sell products online but are looking to upgrade their stores. Although Amazon can help in such cases, Sahu and Manjita say the commission charged by the e-commerce giant restricts entrepreneurs’ earnings. Manson charges 1% of its customers’ total sales to offer its platform. But it is significantly less than the 30% charge Amazon puts on every sale through its platform, Sahu said. By switching to Mason, Manjita said that a store improves average order value by 23% in 30 days and improves its session time by 17% and sell-through by 35% in 60 days. In addition to its flagship commerce engine, Mason offers a Shopify plugin called ModeMagic. It is designed for brands getting started and basically deep diving into the Shopify ecosystem, Sahu said. By offering its standalone platform and Shopify plugin, the startup essentially wants to cater to both types of entrepreneurs and businesses — the ones that are not relying on a particular platform and the others that use Shopify as their backend. Mason has raised a total of $7.5 million in a seed round led by Accel and Ideaspring Capital, with participation from Lightspeed India Partners as well as Mana VC, Gaingels, Core91 and VH Capital. “In order to build a truly scalable outcome, the team is on the journey to create a self-serve platform wherein e-commerce brand owners could use it to create, communicate and grow,” said Subrata Mitra, Partner at Accel, in a prepared statement. Manjita said that Mason will utilize the fresh funding to set up its marketing, sales, customer success and partnerships teams — to bring the product to more and more customers. The startup also plans to create better and more content for entrepreneurs to help them learn about solving challenges in their e-commerce journey. Mason currently has around 40 people in its team, including close to 30 working toward product technology and design operations. A large part of its workforce is based out of Bengaluru, though it has its early go-to-market teams in Toronto and advisors in San Diego and New York. It is also setting up its customer success, early marketing and growth and partnerships teams in North America.

Apis in talks to back fintech Money View at $1 billion valuation despite market slump • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Accel, Apis Partners, Fintech, india, Startups, tiger globalNo Comments

India’s Money View is in talks to raise a new round of funding at a unicorn valuation, two sources familiar with the matter told ZebethMedia, in a boost to the local fintech community that has been rattled by the central bank’s stringent guidelines and funding crunch in recent months. Apis Partners is deliberating leading a funding round of about $125 million to $150 million in the Bengaluru-headquartered startup at a valuation of about $1 billion, the sources said. The round, a Series E, hasn’t been finalized, so terms of the deal may still change, the sources cautioned, requesting anonymity speaking about nonpublic information. Apis Partners, Money View and the startup’s founders did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening local time. The eight-year-old startup, which was valued at $615 million in a Series D funding round in March this year, offers lending to individuals who can’t avail credit from banks and other financial institutions. The startup has said in the past that the majority of its customers live in small Indian cities and towns. “India is one of the most underserved large economies when it comes to access to credit. More than 70% of the credit provided by banks is only given to the top 10% of affluent Indians,” it describes on its website. “The most underserved segments are people who earn less than 5L [$6,070] a year. Money View aims to bridge this credit gap by providing personalized loan offers for its customers through its robust data and risk assessment model. The company’s proprietary data models provide a 360-degree risk assessment, enabling credit for the underserved segments.” Money View — which counts Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global and Accel among its existing backers — has been profitable for over a year, its founder Puneet Agarwal said in a press statement in May, and was on pace to clock an annualized revenue run rate of about $80 million. “In the age of cash burning businesses, we are one of the very few fintech startups to be profitable for more than a year now,” Agarwal said in a press release in May. Its new funding deliberations come at a time when the dealflow activity has slowed down dramatically in the South Asian market as investors grow cautious of writing new checks and evaluate their underwriting models after valuations of publicly listed firms take a tumble. Indian startups raised $3 billion in the quarter that ended in September, down 57% from the previous quarter and 80% year-over-year, according to market intelligence platform Tracxn.