Commerce

Enable lands $94M to help B2B companies manage their rebate programs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Commerce, Enable, Enterprise, Insight Partners, startupNo Comments

Enable, a startup selling access to a platform that helps business-to-business (B2B) companies manage their rebate programs, today announced that it raised $94 million in an oversubscribed Series C round led by Insight Partners with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, SE Ventures, PSP Growth and HarbourVest Partners. Bringing Enable’s total capital raised to $156 million, the proceeds will be put toward increasing headcount and expanding to new markets, particularly Europe, CEO Andrew Butt told ZebethMedia in an interview. Rebates are a familiar concept in the consumer space, but they tend to work a little differently in B2B. B2B companies offer rebates when their customers achieve some benchmark, such as total spend, purchasing a collection of products or a marketing referral. The challenge becomes keeping track of these benchmarks and progress toward them, ensuring customers receive the rebates to which they’re entitled and — in the process — fostering relationships. Enable, which Butt co-founded in 2016 with Denys Shortt, aims to remove some of the burden of rebates and ideally turn them into profit drivers. The platform surfaces deal term and sales incentive data for manufacturers, distributors and retailers, providing insights into what’s owed versus collected, the status of rebate deals and what’s on deck. Butt says he was inspired to launch the company by his experiences in the B2B space, including at Enable Informatix, a property management software-as-a-service vendor he co-founded and sold to Sovereign Capital in 2010. “For many organizations, rebate and incentive data is typically tucked away in massive spreadsheets where one formula error will break everything,” Butt said. “Often, this data is the responsibility of a single employee, meaning few people understand the data and how these deals work.” Image Credits: Enable In contrast, Enable provides collaborative dashboards to author, execute and track the progress of rebate deals. The platform, which allows customers to create joint business plans, also forecasts rebate activity, attempting to guarantee companies that they’ll be able to pay and collect on all rebates owed. Enable recently launched a special pricing agreements product that connects to a company’s supply chain to improve transparency on claimbacks, the agreements between distributors and manufacturers based on sales to a contractor. Elsewhere, Enable introduced new services to manage a wider range of incentives, including a module that allows sales and pricing teams to align around large deals and a commissions system that delivers rebate status tracking to manufacturers. “Enable helps companies incentivize the purchasing behavior of partners while also ensuring they collect all incentives owed to them,” Butt said. “Our biggest competition is Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or overextended enterprise resource management platforms.” Butt claims that around 10,000 companies are using Enable’s platform today and that growth has been “accelerating” year-over-year after expanding to the U.S. and Canada (although he didn’t define “growth”). Enable employs 400 people, and the company expects to end the year with 435 throughout the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia. “We’ve been extremely successful with our growth in this market, and [the Series C] round adds fuel to that growth. At the same time, it helps us extend our vision,” Butt said. “Rebates are incentives. They are a key way to drive behavior between partners. It’s our vision to empower thriving partner ecosystems, so as we continue our growth you’ll see us adding products that enhance partners alignment on goals and incentives while increasing transparency and easing friction, allowing every partner to flourish.”

V3 Ventures launches to put €100M into startups in health, beauty and food • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in beauty, Biotech & Health, Commerce, food, Health, StartupsNo Comments

Verlinvest, a family-backed, “evergreen”, growth fund investor, that has previously funded a few well-known consumer brands like Oatly, Vita Coco, Tony’s Chocolonely, Who Gives A Crap, Pedego, Chewy.com, Hint & others, is getting into the venture game. After putting around €50m into VC initiatives globally, it’s now embarking on being the kick-starter LP in a new VC fund dubbed V3 Ventures, the idea being to invest up to €100m into founders and brands directly. While being independent of Verlinvest, V3 will still be able to leverage the former’s international network. The plan is to target startups in the UK, Europe, US, and India, focusing on pre-seed to Series A investments across e-commerce, health and beauty and food and beverage.  Lopo Champalimaud, who previously founded hair and beauty booking platform, Treatwell, after a stint as MD of lastminute.com, is V3’s co-founder. I spoke to Champalimaud about the move and what V3’s strategy would be: “I’ve got over 25 years of being an entrepreneur and I figured the next 25 years helping entrepreneurs build their businesses,” he said. “With V3 we plan to invest in consumer-focused companies, be global, and very much focus on ESG, because that’s where consumers are. It’s really about trying to think about how the consumer evolves and to remain at the forefront of that.” V3’s Indian deals will be led by Arjun Vaidya, who sold the D2C ayurvedic medicine brand to the Dr. Vaidya’s brand. To date, V3 Ventures has already invested in UK-based personalized cat food brand Katkin, US skincare startup Revea, and French supplement experts Cuure.

Kenzz, an Egyptian e-commerce platform for the mass market, grabs $3.5M seed funding • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in africa, Commerce, e-commerce, kenzz, VentureNo Comments

Kenzz, an e-commerce platform bringing shopping to the mass market in Egypt and MENA, is announcing that it has raised $3.5 million in seed funding. U.S.-based and MENA-focused venture capital firm Outliers Ventures led the round. Some of the participating investors include HOF Capital, Foundation Ventures, and Samurai Incubate. The company, founded this February by Ahmed Atef, Mahmoud Al Silk and Moataz Sami, said it will use the seed round to grow its product categories, widen the product categories on its platform, hire talent and invest in tech as it launches its app. You can compare the e-commerce landscape in Egypt to fintech across Africa in that there are more startups in that sector than others; reports say 20% of tech startups in Egypt are in the e-commerce and retail sectors. Several factors drive the creation of such startups in the country, including a young and urban population that has increased in tandem with internet and mobile penetration rates rising over the years. About 40% of Egyptians purchase consumer goods online weekly, according to data. However, some, like Kenzz’s founders, believe that internet penetration levels and shopping numbers in Egypt mask the reality that e-commerce is yet to be fully realized and optimized in the North African country and, more widely, across the MENA region. Chief executive officer Atef told ZebethMedia that they launched Kenzz for this purpose: to deepen e-commerce adoption in Egypt. Online shoppers in Egypt mainly purchase items on big e-commerce platforms such as Souq, which rebranded as Amazon Egypt in 2021; Jumia; and Noon or social commerce platforms that utilize Facebook pages and groups in a B2B2C manner. Atef argues that while both models have managed to increase e-commerce activities in Egypt, the big e-commerce players neglect the mass market and instead focus more on the three largest cities Cairo, Alexandria and Giza — while smaller social platforms tend to provide unreliable and unorganized service. Thus, Kenzz was built to fill in the lapses from the two models: make products available to the mass market and offer them in an organized manner. “We’re going after a completely different segment that Amazon and the big platforms are not looking at as they are centralized in big cities and towards the people who are comfortable buying online,” said Atef. “What we’re doing is bringing that experience much closer to the masses and building a reliable, trustworthy e-commerce platform that caters specifically for the mass market, solving for the barriers to buying, whether it’s trust, affordability and relevance, while capitalizing on social engagement and social interaction aspects of e-commerce.” Kenzz’s model is akin to players like Taager because it’s social. However, the mass e-commerce solution is taking a B2C approach as it removes the middleman/resellers, sources products directly from local manufacturers and offers them to consumers. Therefore, consumers know the exact brand selling to them, Atef said. The platform also gives consumers discounts of up to 65% when they make collective purchases with friends and family. According to the CEO, sourcing directly from manufacturers and importers enables it to secure the best deals for consumers — and the group buying feature facilitates more referrals, bringing down its customer acquisition costs. Group orders can also be sent to single locations to reduce consumer delivery fees and logistics costs for Kenzz. “Most users didn’t see the need to pay for deliveries as they could buy offline and get the product themselves. However, they are finding out that they pay more for transportation. So what was interesting in the pilot is that we’ve seen that people want to share this burden as it became a major pain point when we talked with consumers,” the chief executive said. “So when you’re buying with your friends, we can deliver the order to one place. They get to unlock more savings when they choose this approach.” Alef also stated that Kenzz’s model helps stakeholders on the other end — local manufacturers and SMEs — by providing data on what consumers want and access to such consumers among additional insights. Kenzz is yet to launch fully into the market as it is fine-tuning offerings to meet consumers’ demand, which, according to Alef, was grand when the platform soft-launched for two months. He said thousands of customers used the platform within this timeframe, with 50% ordering from outside Egypt’s big cities. “Those numbers help prove this vast potential outside the big cities where people were not comfortable buying online. But when you’re so relevant to them, in terms of brand products, prices and experiences, you unlock this huge potential.” In a statement, Sarah AlSaleh, a partner at Outliers Venture Capital, said the asset-light Kenzz is solving two key issues that current e-commerce incumbents are not addressing: affordable and reliable last-mile logistics and an uncompromising customer trust philosophy. She references Kenzz’s founding team — with experience from Vodafone, Google, Amazon and Jumia — as one of the reasons Outliers invested. “The diversity and depth of Kenzz’s founding team strongly positions them to combine a multitude of experiences and expertise into creating a category-defining company and e-commerce champion for Egypt,” said the partner.

Jane Technologies launches its first iOS app for cannabis shopping • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in CommerceNo Comments

Jane Technologies’ impressive cannabis marketplace is finally available in an app. The company today launched its first iOS app enabling users to browse the inventory of local cannabis dispensaries and make purchases within the app. Its web-based marketplace is lovely, and I’ve found it amazingly accurate, thanks to its live inventory information. I’m thrilled the company is bringing the power of its web marketplace to a smartphone app. Users can shop local retailers by stores, products, or categories and browse confidently, knowing the listed inventory is accurate. There are plenty of ways to buy weed through a smartphone. Weedmaps, Leafy, and Eaze are among the most popular. When asked what makes Jane’s app different, CEO and founder Socrates Rosenfeld tells ZebethMedia it comes down to the data. “We’ve been a boring company for some time, and we’ve been focused on developing proprietary technology. And we have a lot of IP now that can cleanse and locate a single SKU in real-time. So to put that in perspective, we’ve seen many tech providers struggle with finding a specific SKU sitting on a store shelf in real-time.” Since its founding in 2015, Jane has been dedicated to helping dispensaries provide accurate e-commerce information to consumers. On the dispensary side, Jane’s product cleanses and standardizes SKUs, ensuring products have unified metadata. Consumers and retailers benefit from this trusted source of data. And without this dataset, Jane couldn’t have built the app. Now we have the foundation upon which now we can layer on a marketplace,” CEO Rosenfeld said, “and provide a shopping experience that we think is the shopping experience for how people will shop for cannabis for generations to come because it replicates other CPG verticals like Amazon and Drizzly.” Jane Technologies was founded in 2015 by Socrates Rosenfeld and headquartered in Soquel, California. The company has raised $127m over three rounds of fundraising.

Want to tip for your Amazon delivery? Drivr is a new app for that • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in Amazon, Commerce, delivery, drivr, Startups, Tipping, tips, TransportationNo Comments

Tipping in the U.S. is a critical part of how the wheels turn in the service economy. One service area that’s been very overlooked, however, is the world of last-mile delivery — a service job that falls between the cracks when it comes to tipping because those who deliver products typically don’t work for the company that is selling you the product, leaving the responsibility and incentive for tipping up in the air. Now a new startup called Drivr is launching to try to close that gap. Drivr is a crowdsourced tipping platform that uses data science to map drivers to neighborhoods, and then creates tipping pools to collect monthly contributions from residents in those neighborhoods, with the sum then divided up among drivers serving those areas proportionately based on how many deliveries they’ve made there. Drivr has built apps for the two sides of its marketplace: residents to tip money, and drives to sign up and collect those tips, and it’s launching first in the city of Santa Cruz, CA, before looking to expand elsewhere in the U.S. Drivr’s arrival (ho ho) comes as several other startups are also thinking about tipping and how to build a business out of it. They include Tiphaus from Seattle; Tipjar in the UK (which has raised around $4 million from angels and crowdfunding); 7shifts (which covers a wider range of services and has raised more than $130 million); EasyTip; and TipPot. Patreon, now valued at over $4 billion, is also honing in on the idea of customers voluntarily paying producers as part of the remuneration equation. Patreon’s focus is on creatives, but coincidentally also has a membership concept to it similar to Drivrs with its monthly contribution element. Building a platform for collecting and distributing tips to last-mile delivery drivers is a long time coming, given how tipping has already become so commonplace in other service areas, including in the tech economy. In the world of on-demand mobility services dominated by the likes of Uber and Lyft, tipping has already come and gone as a thorny issue. Initially the leading company in the space, Uber, was reluctant to create a space for tipping, arguing that the price they were charging, and the payouts to drivers, already took tipping into account (it also conveniently helped reduce friction for paying for a service that was already potentially dancing on the edges of reasonable-meets-affordable for the majority of consumers). Drivers and customers took issue with that, since the lack of transparency felt a little exploitative rather than fair. Eventually in 2017 Uber caved in and created an option for tips. But that was not without problems: user behavior initially seemed inclined to leave tips out. The challenges are even bigger for last-mile delivery drivers, who have a lot of pressure to deliver, so to speak. A daily route often will include between 250 and 300 packages with a pay range of between $16 and $22 per hour of work. The number of packages per day — but not the pay rate — hikes up to 400 during holiday sales and made up sales holidays like Prime Day. Apart from the complexities of Amazon managing tipping for drivers it doesn’t employ, there is another disincentive: membership services like Prime have intentionally lowered the barrier to buying by including shipping charges — meaning somehow building in a tipping option would defeat the point of that as far as Amazon is concerned. Drivr the concept is still in its early stages, and so is the startup, which to begin with is being primarily self-funded by $1 million from the co-founders Sol Lipman and Jacob Knobel themselves. The pair have worked together for years, building a number of startups together, some of which got acquired by Aol and Yahoo — which are now the same company, Yahoo Inc., which also owns ZebethMedia. (To be clear, that is not how I came into contact with the startup). Most recently, the pair worked together at Amazon on Ring, among other things, after Amazon acquired a startup called Owlcam where both had senior roles. It was at Amazon, Lipman told me, that he started to thinking about the role that last-mile delivery drivers play in the e-commerce ecosystem. In short, drivers have it bad. On one hand, they are central both to the customer experience and more practically the completion of each transaction by way of delivering the product into the buyer’s hands. But on the other, drivers also work at arm’s length from the businesses themselves, since both Amazon and major delivery partners like FedEx do not on the whole directly employ all their last-mile carriers. (Flex and Wholefoods are examples of exceptions where Amazon does, and notably you can tip drivers for these services.) One of the consequences is that drivers typically do not have a facility to take tips. This is where Drivr comes in. Lipman’s theory is that because tipping has become a central part of how people in delivery roles are remunerated, when it’s not possible to do so, it impacts not just those drivers’ take-home pay, but their allegiance to staying at the job. As a result, attrition rates are appalling for delivery drivers. Estimates vary but one report estimated that 15.8% of drivers operating on the dispatch model typically leave their jobs within 30 days, and 35.4% are gone within 90 days. Drivr cites research that claims that only 10% stay for a year. Put simply, the pay for many of them is not worth the effort involved. Initially, Drivr will operate its tips service by way of a pooled model: it uses algorithms and census data to determine “neighborhoods” around which it organizes both residents and the drivers who work in that area, and it will include in that data about where and how much drivers themselves work. “We track their location and time spent in any given neighborhood. We take that data and fairly distribute tips based on that,” said Lipman. Residents

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart launches metaverse shopping experience • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in Amazon, Commerce, Crypto, Flipkart, indiaNo Comments

Flipkart has launched a metaverse offering for consumers to discover and shop new products, the latest bet from the Indian e-commerce giant as it experiments with web3 offerings to supercharge its customer experience. The Walmart-backed Bengaluru-headquartered firm has partnered with eDAO, a Polygon-incubated firm, to launch the metaverse offering, which it is calling Flipverse. The offering is in the pilot stage and aimed to garner interest during the festive season this month. On Flipverse, which goes live on Flipkart’s Android app Monday, the company is offering “gamified, interactive and immersive” experiences for consumers where they will be able to collect the company’s loyalty points — Supercoins — as well as digital collectibles from partner brands. At a briefing Monday, Flipkart said “a wide range of brands” including Puma, Noise, Nivea, Lavie, Tokyo Talkies, Campus, VIP, Ajmal Perfumes and Himalaya are partnering to set up experience theaters on Flipverse. “The idea is to have millions of users experience Flipverse and open the doors to the future of shopping,” the company said. The company’s executives acknowledged that its web3 offerings are at an experimental stage, but they said they are confident that it has legs to eventually become a critical part of Flipkart’s future. Flipkart and its chief rival in India, Amazon, are increasingly broadening their offerings to reach new customers in the South Asian market and retain loyal base. Amazon launched a QVC-style livestream shopping in India late last month, bringing an army of more than 150 creators to host livestreams and plug products in the videos. “While we have only just begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible in the metaverse, we see e-commerce as one of the killer use cases. Combining top brands with Flipkart’s e-commerce expertise in a virtual environment stands to revolutionize online retail as we know it. Flipverse will be a vibrant, visible expression of the metaverse, and I’m proud that this activation is taking place on Polygon,” said Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, in a statement. The broader partnership with Flipkart is Polygon’s latest win to attract large brands. The Ethereum scaling platform has partnered with a number of firms including Stripe, Meta and Starbucks in recent months. Flipverse isn’t Flipkart’s first foray into web3. The company partnered with Carl Pei’s Nothing earlier this year to give exclusive NFTs to those purchasing the smartphone from the platform. “The future growth of e-commerce will be influenced by the immersive technologies of today, and Metaverse is one of the significant revolutions in this arena with immense potential,” said Naren Ravula, VP and Head of Product Strategy and Deployment at Flipkart Labs, said in a statement. “The launch of Flipverse will continue to have an impact on innovative industries like e-commerce and enhance the customer experience while delivering a gamified and an immersive shopping experience, especially in light of the adoption of the metaverse and web3 platforms by multiple brands in India. By providing customers with access to their preferred brands, offers, SuperCoins, and digital collectibles, we are aiming to improve their shopping experiences in a virtual and immersive setting.” (More to follow)

Clear Capital lays off 27% of its global staff • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 14, 2022Posted in Clear Capital, Commerce, Layoffs, real estate techNo Comments

Clear Capital, a real estate valuation technology company and firm, is laying off 27% of its staff months after freezing mass hiring, ZebethMedia has learned from sources. A spokesperson for Clear Capital confirmed the layoffs to ZebethMedia but did not share the specific number of employees impacted. Last November, the company announced they had 1,400 total global employees, so using that figure the layoff could have impacted 378 employees. The reduction primarily impacted its operational team, according to sources. “Clear Capital is restructuring all company divisions to reduce expenses and support our future business strategy amidst today’s housing market reality,” said Duane Andrews, CEO of Clear Capital in a written statement to ZebethMedia. “This will allow us to refocus the business on key areas and ensure we are on track for sustainable growth. The CEO also cited ”the impact of a rising interest rate environment in the mortgage industry has resulted in a significant decrease in volume from our customers,” as a reason for the layoffs. The company did not explain what type of severance, if any, was offered to employees. In an internal memo sent to employees obtained by ZebethMedia, Andrews explained Clear Capital executives had anticipated a decrease in work volume over the summer but did not expect to make cuts come fall. “Keeping folks engaged and contributing was necessary; our forecasts showed that the Fall would bring increased volume,” read Andrews’ memo. “As we approached Fall, the markets stated indicating otherwise, and we now know volume will not return for a significant period of time.” Andrews added the decision to cut staff and locations was “a last resort” and “there are no guarantees” that further cuts won’t be made. Sources explained employees were required to attend an “abrupt” Google Meet call at 9 a.m. PST on Wednesday. Once in, they were split into two groups: those that would remain and those laid off. Employees were told back in August that there would be no layoffs, sources say. Sources declined to comment on the record due to fear of retaliation, and because they said Clear Capital advised employees not to speak to the press. According to a meeting call recording obtained by ZebethMedia, Clear Capital’s Vice President of Customer Success Heather Shick and Executive Vice President of Customer Experience Luke Fredrick addressed the layoffs to employees and asked for those staying to feed into their “grit”. “Everything that we planned on with this was so that we didn’t need to do it again,” Shick said, “Our goal is to not have this meeting a second time, but there is no guarantee. Your workloads are going to change. You’re going to be busier. We are all going to be busier, and it’s going to be tough.” Shick further explained in the call that inflation rates in the real estate investing market led to the company’s decision. Inflation rates have surged drastically after the COVID-19 pandemic and have impacted the real estate space. As the once-hot market begins to freeze the rate hike has brought into question if there will be a potential recession. The Reno, Nevada-based company claims to be the “leader in property valuation management and data solutions”, and works as the middleman for banks, investors and homeowners. Last year, the company bought CubiCasa, a Finland-based floor planning app for iOS and Android for an undisclosed amount. Despite the company’s signs of growth, it was facing declines in customer volume to which Clear Capital cites macroeconomic conditions. Employees laid off explained that the decision was unexpected and caught them by surprise. One source told ZebethMedia they “feel in shambles”. During the meeting, Clear Capital announced it would be closing its Truckee, Calif. office and said there will be no operational staff in its Roseville, Calif. location. Those still employed are expected to return back to in-person work on Oct. 24. Current and former Clear Capital employees can contact Andrew Mendez by e-mail at andrew.mendez@techcrunch.com or on Signal, a secure encrypted messaging app, at 669-832-6800.

Shein owner fined $1.9M for failing to notify 39M users of data breach • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 14, 2022Posted in China, Commerce, eCommerce, SheinNo Comments

A data breach from 2018 is putting Shein under the spotlight as the ultra-fast fashion e-commerce platform continues to conquer Gen-Z markets across the world. Zoetop, the firm that owns Shein and its sister brand Romwe, has been fined $1.9 million by New York for failing to properly handle a security incident, according to a notice from the state’s Attorney General office this week. New York doesn’t publicly release data breach notifications like Maine, New Hampshire, California, or other states, which is why the AG came so much later than when the cyberattack happened. Shein, which was founded in China and recently moved its core assets to Singapore, saw explosive growth during the pandemic as the virus prevention pushed consumers to shop online. Its jaw-dropping affordability and vast clothing options have made it one of the fastest-growing consumer internet platforms worldwide in the past two years. The firm’s meteoric rise puts the once low-key fashion exporter from China on the spot. It went from having no dedicated PR personnel just a few years ago to now scrambling to handle mounting media inquiries about supply chain transparency and alleged design theft as it further grows and gears up for an IPO. The data breach brings it yet another PR problem. The company claims it’s significantly stepped up its security measures since. “We have fully cooperated with the New York Attorney General and are pleased to have resolved this matter. Protecting our customers’ data and maintaining their trust is a top priority, especially with ongoing cyber threats posed to businesses around the world. Since the data breach, which occurred in 2018, we have taken significant steps to further strengthen our cybersecurity posture and we remain vigilant,” Shein says in a statement. What happened? A cybersecurity attack that originated in 2018 resulted in the theft of 39 million Shein account credentials, including those of more than 375,000 New York residents, according to the AG’s announcement. An investigation by the AG’s office found that Zoetop only contacted “a fraction” of the 39 million compromised accounts, and for the vast majority of the users impacted, the firm failed to even alert them that their login credentials had been stolen. The AG’s office also concluded that Zoetop’s public statements about the data breach were misleading. In one instance, the firm falsely stated that only 6.42 million consumers had been impacted and that it was in the process of informing all the impacted users. A lot has changed since 2018. Shein has risen from an up-and-coming online fast fashion seller at the time to an all-encompassing e-commerce platform that is threatening Amazon. In the second quarter of this year, the app’s U.S. downloads surpassed Amazon’s for the first time. The data breach might be dated, but keep in mind that Shein has been operating since 2008, so four years is quite recent in the firm’s history of existence. Cost-saving, trend-seeking Gen-Z consumers might continue to shop on Shein despite its publicity issues, but to win the trust of regulators and the general public, there’s still much to be done.

Target.com is latest retailer to add support for SNAP payments for online shoppers • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 13, 2022Posted in Commerce, eCommerce, online grocery, Snap, TargetNo Comments

Target is the latest national retailer to roll out the ability for customers to pay with their SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits when shopping for groceries online. While the payment method has long been accepted in stores, online grocery retailers offering curbside pickup and delivery programs have only more recently begun to support the payment type in their online offerings. That was also true for Target, where customers who wanted to pay with SNAP could only do so in-store. Now, the retailer says customers will be able to pay for SNAP-eligible grocery items on Target.com. Soon, it will also introduce mobile payment options for digital orders in the Target app. These changes will allow customers to use SNAP to buy groceries for same-day pickup through Target’s Order Pickup and Drive Up services, both of which don’t have minimum order requirements or subscription fees. Customers can also apply Target Circle discounts to their food items, when available, or shop the grocery deals in the retailer’s weekly ads. To get started, customers will first need to log into their Target.com account and add their Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) account number as a new card under “Payments.” They can then add SNAP-eligible items to their online cart and pay using their EBT payment method at checkout, confirming their purchase with the PIN. “Food and beverage is an incredibly important part of our guests’ lives, especially as we head into the holiday season,” said Rick Gomez, Target’s chief food and beverage officer, in a statement. “I’m proud that we’re adding new digital payment options for grocery shopping so we can make the entire Target experience more accessible to all families,” he added. Target had announced earlier this year it would soon accept SNAP for online food purchases, and then began pilot-testing the option in select states this year, including Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas after first testing the feature earlier this summer in Minnesota alone. With this week’s announcement, the SNAP payment option is available in all U.S. states except Alaska, Target says. As many retailers have already explained, online shopping should no longer be considered a luxury. Lower-income shoppers, including those on SNAP, can often save money by shopping online where they can better compare deals between stores and where they may find discounts they may have otherwise overlooked. In addition, being able to shop for groceries online can be a time-saver — particularly for those who are working long hours or multiple jobs to make ends meet. In recent years, many major U.S. retailers have introduced support for SNAP to online consumers, including Amazon and Walmart, both of which were participants in a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) pilot program introduced in 2019 that aimed to open up online grocery shopping to those on public assistance. And with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic the following year, the need for the program became even more critical as people looked to avoid indoor shopping to reduce their risk of catching the virus. Outside of the retailers, other grocery providers have also been working to help customers on public assistance. Instacart this year has been steadily advancing support for SNAP across various U.S. states, allowing shoppers to use its app to buy groceries from select retailers using their benefits, after initially partnering with ALDI to offer the option back in 2020. Amazon, too, has been looking to better support lower-income shoppers, having just reorganized its website to introduce a new hub that aggregates its discounts and various assistance programs under one roof. Here, shoppers can find its discounted Prime membership, Amazon Layaway, and information about using Amazon Cash and SNAP EBT payments.

MoKo, Kenya’s home furniture startup, raises $6.5M • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 13, 2022Posted in Commerce, furniture, kenya, Moko, StartupsNo Comments

Kenya has the largest and most thriving furniture industry in East Africa, but the sector’s potential is hindered by several challenges among them production inefficiencies and quality concerns, forcing most major retailers to settle on imports. MoKo Home + Living, a Kenya-based home furniture manufacturer and omnichannel retailer, saw this gap and over several years set out to bridge it through quality and guarantees. The company is now eyeing its next phase of growth, following a $6.5 million series B debt-equity funding round, co-led by U.S based investment fund Talanton and Swiss investor AlphaMundi Group. Novastar Ventures, which co-led the firm’s Series A round, and Blink CV also made follow-on investments. Kenya’s Victoria Commercial Bank offered $3 million debt financing, $1 million of which is mezzanine financing – a debt that can be turned into equity. “We entered this market because we saw a real opportunity to guarantee and deliver quality furniture. We also wanted to bring convenience to customers, by making it easy for them to buy home furniture, the largest asset for most families in Kenya,” Eric Kouskalis, MoKo’s managing director, who co-founded the startup with Fiorenzo Conte, told ZebethMedia. MoKo was founded in 2014, initially as Watervale Investment Limited, an entity that sought to fix raw material supply issues for furniture manufacturers. However, in 2017 it pivoted and started a pilot for its first consumer product (a mattress), and then a year later launched the MoKo Home + Living brand to serve the mass market. The startup says it has grown five-fold over the last three years, and its products are currently in more than 370,000 homes in Kenya. It hopes to sell to millions of homes over the next few years, as it embarks on scaling up production and growing its product line. Among its current products is the popular MoKo mattress. “We plan to have an offering for each major piece of furniture in a typical home – bed frame, TV stand, coffee table, carpet. We are also developing even more affordable products in existing product categories – sofas and mattresses,” said Kouskalis. Digital-first brand MoKo is also planning to use the funding to grow its growth and presence in Kenya by tapping its online channels, building more partnerships with retailers and outlets to increase offline sales. It plans to also purchase more equipment. Already, MoKo is using digital technology in its production lines, having invested in “equipment that can take complex woodworking designs programmed by our engineers and execute them precisely in seconds.” This, they say, has helped the team to work efficiently and increase production. The “automated recycling technology and software that calculates optimal use of raw materials” has also helped them cut waste. “We were impressed by MoKo’s climate friendly local production capabilities. The company is a leading innovator in the industry because they’ve turned sustainability into a remarkable commercial advantage. Every step they’ve taken on this front not only protects the environment, it also improves the durability or affordability of MoKo’s offering to its customers,” said Miriam Atuya of the AlphaMundi Group. MoKo targets to enter three new markets by 2025 and to reach a wide pool of customers as furniture demand in the continent continues to grow, driven by population growth, urbanization and increasing purchasing power. “The potential for growth is what excites us the most. There’s still so much room to better serve millions of families in Kenya. That’s just the beginning – MoKo’s model is relevant for most markets in Africa, where families face similar obstacles in making comfortable, welcoming homes,” said Kouskalis.