E-commerce marketing software company RetainIQ raises USD 2.3 million in a seed funding round

RetainIQ, an e-commerce marketing company, has raised USD 2.3 million (Rs 17.2 crores) in a seed round of funding led by venture capital firm Accel Partners. RetainIQ will use the raised capital to rapidly scale its operations, accelerate product development, and expand its core teams across engineering, product, sales, marketing and operations.

RetainIQ, founded in June 2021, by serial entrepreneurs Sitakanta Ray, Arpit Gupta and Sulakshan Kumar, is a software platform that enables e-commerce stores and brands globally to convert and retain their customers by leveraging communication automation on Email, WhatsApp, SMS, Push and On-site.

By empowering brands to deliver personalized experiences across all customer touchpoints from a single, integrated digital marketing dashboard, RetainIQ solves the issues of conversion and retention faced by many e-commerce platforms. In this way, RetainIQ is heading a paradigm shift in the way brands and customers communicate.

The funding round also saw the participation of VC firm Hauz Khas Ventures, London-based private equity firm Creator Collective Capital, Unicommerce founders Ankit Pruthi, Karun Singla, and Vibhu Garg, upGrad co-founder Mayank Kumar, Ally.io founder Vetri Vellore, Brightchamps founder Ravi Bhushan Kumar, and Gromo founder Ankit Khandelwal, among others.

"The global retail industry is currently experiencing a generational shift. The future always lay in e-commerce, and the pandemic only accelerated this shift. Shopify has offered online retailers a safe space to grow, and in the process has become a huge entity – worth over USD 100 billion and harbouring multiple unicorns within its own ecosystem," said Arpit Gupta, co-founder of RetainIQ.

"As acquisition costs continue to grow for e-commerce brands, customer retention is coming into prominence. We're really excited to back RetainIQ to solve the retention challenge that we think can lead to a massive opportunity. We believe their team of repeat founders have the right background and expertise to address this problem," commented Subrata Mitra, Partner at Accel Partners India.

In addition to funding, both earlier and new investors are positioned to offer RetainIQ guidance and advice on many fronts, from market and product strategy to critical industry connections. The coming months will see RetainIQ deploy this funding round to further evolve its product, upscale its offerings, and expand its presence across the Indian and US markets.

RetainIQ is backed by Accel, one of the top VCs in India and is co-founded by ex-entrepreneurs and product leaders who have built leading products in the e-commerce domain.