Swirl, a live commerce SaaS platform, has raised USD 250,000 in a pre-seed round sponsored by global strategic investors and angel investors from the United States, Singapore, the Middle East, and Europe. Ex-IBM WW Executive Asheesh Khaneja, Founder Indianivesh FirstBridge Fund, Vineet Sharma, VP Brandscope (Dentsu), Nirmal Shah, Prism Advisory, Gaurav Agarwal, Freedom Financial Network, and others are among the investors.
The money will be used to help the company expand in India and improve its multi-cloud video commerce technology platform, which allows retailers to empower their in-store employees to provide a worldwide audience with an immersive video purchasing experience.
“Wherever they end consumer is involved, Live Commerce will play a major role in enabling sales by bridging the online-offline divide. Right now it may be eCommerce, but if other industries such as Financial services Real-Estate, Automobile, Travel, and Hospitality, etc adapt, then we are potentially looking at a $1Trillion opportunity at play here which means video led sales engagement models will occupy 10-15% of global eCommerce market share by 2025,” said Kaizad Hansotia, Founder and CEO.
This year, the company saw a 300 percent year-over-year increase in revenue, and it will soon begin raising an institutional round to accelerate its growth and expand into new categories beyond eCommerce as it prepares to enter the US and European markets by early 2022, with a goal of becoming one of the top five global players pushing the boundaries of technology with experiential commerce.
Swirl, founded in 2017 by Kaizad Hansotia and Bheshaj Joshi, uses Shoppable Videos, Livestream Shopping, and 1:1 Virtual Shopping to help marketers convert 3X more customers. The technology is cutting-edge, infinitely scalable, and includes a proprietary layer on top of the video that uses Text, Chat, WhatsApp, SMS, and Voice to create a human-like buying experience.
Swirl gives organizations complete control over their client data and provides real-time interaction metrics as well as post-show data points to help them optimize campaigns for future sales. It also integrates with any website, whether it’s built on Shopify, WooCommerce, or any other bespoke eCommerce or CRM platform, without requiring any coding.
“I think video social interactive commerce is an idea whose time has come and 5G will only accelerate this trend. Happy to be a part of Swirl’s journey to becoming a global leader in this space,” said Siddarth Razdan.