Blidz, the leading social shopping app combining gamification and social group buying, has raised €6m in Seed funding led by General Catalyst and Peak with participation from D4 Ventures, Fabric Ventures, FJ Labs as well as existing investor IPR.VC.
A group of angels such as Youngme Moon and Christopher North also participated in the heavily oversubscribed round. The funding is used to accelerate the company’s growth across Western markets as well as expand its supply chain and product suite.
Lasse Diercks (CEO) and Markus Haverinen (CPTO) founded Blidz to transform Western eCommerce through social and gamified mechanics. Blidz social shopping app connects users to millions of value-for-money products that can be bought together at a significant discount. Their portfolio consists of carefully selected products ranging from consumer electronics, fashion, groceries, home and gardening products all the way to virtual items that can be purchased in the app.
The trillion-dollar social eCommerce market is growing rapidly in the West as penetration has reached new heights and more and more consumers embrace online shopping.
Blidz is using value-for-money products as its spearhead catering to a large audience, with some of the key early-adopters being women in both rural and urban areas as well as Gen-Z’s and students, who are looking for the best deals online, preferably together with friends.
“Western online shopping is behind the curve on social adoption. Our goal is to liberate consumers from expensive and boring shopping experiences by letting them leverage their own activity and social networks to get the best value-for-money products anywhere”, said Lasse Diercks. “Western consumers embrace social and gamified solutions. We see that there is large untapped potential in eCommerce to put our users first and continue building our value-capturing shopping app. Having General Catalyst and Peak on board makes us fully equipped to change Western eCommerce as never been seen before.”
Adam Valkin, Managing Director at General Catalyst commented on the investment:
“The Blidz founding team has a number of unique insights relating to the evolution of online commerce. They are creating a new customer experience in the West by combining social media, gaming and shopping into a data-driven entertaining and easy-to-use platform. We’re excited to see what emerges from this talented team.”
“We met with Lasse and Markus early in their journey. Their grit proved, beyond a doubt, that they are the team that can succeed in socializing Western eCommerce” says Indra Sharma, Partner at Peak. “As consumer behavior is increasingly inclining towards social shopping, we believe that the timing is right and we’re thrilled to partner with Lasse, Markus and the Blidz team.”
Source Peak Capital
