For years, the medical apparel market consisted of sterile, ill-fitting scrubs that lack any hint of style. Over the last ten years, a number of new entrants prioritized fashion, aesthetics, and form-fitting apparel for this market. Jaanuu is a direct-to-consumer and manufacturer of performance-oriented, premium scrubs. Founded by a brother and sister duo consisting of a former private equity investor and a physician, Jaanuu offers a line of functional, form-fitting, and comfortable medical apparel and accessories that healthcare professionals are raving about. They’re not the only ones; President Obama was photographed sporting a Jaanuu mask. LA TechWatch caught up with Jaanuu CEO and Cofounder Shaan Sethi to learn more about the company’s start, impressive growth, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $97.6M, and much, much more.
E-Commerce
Meet the Company That’s Trying to Disrupt The $480B Retail Pharmacy Space
Customers are raving about NowRx – a tech-powered pharmacy known for its customer service and reliable free same-day prescription delivery.
Nacelle Raises $50M for its Headless E-Commerce Platform That Truly Decouples the Back and Front Ends
In a crowded digital realm, e-commerce companies are constantly updating the customer experience to respond to emerging touchpoints and to engage consumers in novel ways. Headless commerce is gaining in popularity, designed with a flexible architecture that decouples the front end of a site from the back-end commerce functionality. By decoupling, companies can rapidly iterate and test without disrupting the core commerce functionality, resulting in reduced development time while enriching the customer experience Nacelle is an e-commerce infrastructure platform that allows merchants and brands to move to headless architectures in order to innovate and iterate quickly while reducing dependency on third-party solutions. The company’s core technology, the unified GraphQL API layer, integrates with various commerce platforms and content management systems including Shopify Plus with minimal effort. Merchants on the platform have the flexibility to build true headless solutions with benefits like reduced page speeds and increased conversions while maintaining a single codebase that’s optimized for all devices. The company, founded in 2019, powers the e-commerce presence of brands like LOLA, FTD, Flex, Boll & Branch, Thinx, and ILIA Beauty. LA TechWatch caught up with Nacelle CEO and Founder Brian Anderson to learn more about the state of headless commerce, the company’s strategic plans, and recent round of funding from Tiger Global Management.
Upscribe Raises $4M to Normalize Revenue for Direct-to-Consumer Brands with its Subscription Platform
Establishing monthly and annual recurring revenue has long been the gold standard to measure SaaS companies and the prospects of their businesses. For e-commerce businesses, facing increased competition and higher acquisition costs, creating recurring revenues through subscriptions is one of the things they can do to normalize their revenue streams and build higher lifetime values for each customer. While there have been many solutions that can handle the infrastructure portion of recurring payments, not much attention has been paid to managing the customer relationship. Upscribe is a platform designed specifically for high-growth subscription direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands to optimize the customer relationship and, in turn, revenue derived. The company focuses on reducing churn and increasing retention, allowing customers to skip shipments, swap products, and change order frequency and shipping details seamlessly. Upscribe also offers data insights for merchants that can help them on the acquisition side and the platform seamlessly integrates with existing providers already found in the merchant’s technology stack. Founded in 2019, the Santa Monica-based startup is already profitable. LA TechWatch caught up with Founder and CEO Dileepan Siva to learn more about the trends that are leading to the “SaaS-ification” of e-commerce, the company’s future plans, recent round of funding from investors that include Uncork Capital, Leaders Fund, The House Fund, Fahd Ananta, and Laura Behrens Wu.
Retina Raises $8M for its Customer Lifetime Value Optimization Platform
Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the single most important metric for understanding customer behavior. It’s nearly impossible to understand the impact of your marketing efforts and predict profitability without a focus on CLV. Retina is a customer intelligence platform that leverages AI and data analytics to understand CLV before a customer makes a purchase. Supported by better decisioning, high-growth businesses are able to target the right audience, segment, make product decisions, and drive conversions by integrating Retina into their operations. The Santa Monica-based company is trusted by companies like Penrose Hill, Ritual, Dollar Shave Club, and Nestle. LA TechWatch caught up with Cofounder and CEO Emad Hasan to learn more about how Retina is driving customer acquisition, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding by Alpha Intelligence Capital and Vertical Venture Partners.
Tapcart Raises $50M for its Platform That Lets Shopify Users Seamlessly Build Mobile Apps and More
The global market for mobile commerce is expected to balloon to $6.1T by 2027 from $1.9T in 2020. The pandemic has fundamentally shifted the way consumers look at e-commerce as lockdowns limited in-person activity. Businesses have had to adapt their digital strategies to address this growing interest as mobile becomes a significant driver of revenue growth. Shopify is the leading all-in-one platform for brands, small businesses, and entrepreneurs alike to establish digital storefronts. Tapcart is the mobile commerce platform that enables Shopify merchants to launch their own full-featured mobile apps – a much-needed complement in today’s digital landscape. While many e-commerce merchants have become overly reliant on paid digital, Tapcart’s easy-to-use drag and drop solution offers cost-efficient push notifications to merchants with plans to launch other value-add tools like marketing automation, personalization, and developer kits. During the uncertainty of the pandemic, the Santa Monica-based company was able to grow revenue 3x, handling mobile sale transactions exceeding $1.3B in gross merchandise value (GMV) for brands like Pier One Imports and FIGS. LA TechWatch caught up with CEO and Founder Eric Netsch to learn more about the inspiration for the business, the company’s strategic plans, and latest round of funding from investors that include Left Lane Capital, Shopify, SignalFire, Greycroft, Act One Ventures, and Amplify.LA.
Sunbit Scores Another $130M for its Buy Now, Pay Later Platform for Everyday Services and Becomes LA’s Newest Unicorn
Platforms like Klarna and Affirm have popularized buy it now, pay later platforms to distribute payments over time for e-commerce purchases. Sunbit is the buy now, pay later platform that brings the flexibility and ease of these payments for everyday services like optical care, dental visits, automobile maintenance, and election healthcare. Transactions, for amounts as low as $60 to as high as $10K, can be approved for the flexible solution within 30-seconds in 7300+ locations. LA TechWatch caught up with Cofounder and CEO Arad Levertov to learn more about how Sunbit’s platform brings consumers peace of mind with the ability to pay over time, the company’s strategic plans, and latest round of funding from investors that include Group 11, Zeev Ventures, Migdal Insurance, Harel Group, AltaIR Capital, and More Investment House.
PayPal Acquires Happy Returns and Eyes Post-Purchase Service to Boost Online Shopping
Happy Returns, the in-person return logistics provider for online purchases, has been acquired by Paypal. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
ReCharge Raises $277M for its E-Commerce Subscription Management Software Thats’ the Secret Weapon for Merchants
Recurring revenue is the holy grail for businesses, bringing revenue predictability, deepened customer relationships, and high customer lifetime values. Successfully retaining customers leads to lower acquisition costs in the long term and reduced churn. Given the benefits, SaaS solutions have widely moved to subscription offerings and e-commerce businesses are also jumping in on the trend. The global subscription economy for e-commerce is expected to grow to ~$250B by 2025. ReCharge is a subscription management platform built specifically for e-commerce merchants to capitalize on this growth. Bootstrapped since its founding, the company just raised its first institutional round after growing 91% in 2020. The 15,00+ merchants using Recharge’s checkout solution include Hubble, Harry’s Art of Sport, Fiji, and Oatly. LA TechWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Oisin O’Connor to more about the experience of initially bootstrapping, the company’s impressive traction, the state of the e-commerce market, and recent round of funding from investors that include Summit Partners, ICONIQ Growth, and Bain Capital Ventures.
Retina Makes Understanding Customer Lifetime Value Possible Even Before a Sale
Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the single most important metric for understanding your customers and their behavior. Without a solid understanding of it, it becomes nearly impossible to understand your marketing efforts and predict profitability. Retina is leveraging AI and data analytics to understand CLV before a customer makes a purchase for high-growth consumer companies. According to its data, the customer intelligence platform is able to lift CLV by 44%, generating 8x more return on ad spend while improving marketing efficiency by 30%. Presently, the platform is focused on companies that are doing ~$10M in revenue but plans to roll out its offering to mid-sized businesses is in the works. The level of specialized data that Retina is able to provide has traditionally been reserved for large companies with entire in-house data teams. LA TechWatch caught up with Cofounder and CEO Emad Hasan to learn more about the company’s mission to democratize the access to data that drives high-value sales, future plans, the LA Tech ecosystem, and much, much more.
Arrive Outdoors Raises $4.75M for its Outdoor Gear Rental Platform That Delivers to Your Doorstep
The sharing economy is making the concept of ownership obsolete for many categories. Rachelle Snyder and her cofounder had to go through the difficult process of deciding which of their belongings to take with them during a cross country move and their outdoor gear just couldn’t be accommodated. The experience of trying to obtain gear once in LA led to the foundation for launching Arrive Outdoors, the rental company for premium, outdoor equipment that can deliver an assortment of outdoor gear straight to a consumer’s door. Rachelle shares some insight about how the company makes the exploration of the outdoors more accessible and the company’s recent seed funding round from investors that include Freestyle Capital Science Inc., AVG Basecamp Fund, Corigin Ventures, Pine5 Ventures, and James Reinhart and John Voris.