Snapcommerce, Message-Driven Mobile Commerce Platform, Raises $85M USD in Funding Led by Inovia Capital and Lion Capital

Funding fuels team and product scale; expands from travel into new verticals to connect consumers with personalized promotions

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Snapcommerce, the message-driven mobile commerce platform that connects price-conscious consumers to the best promotions on mobile, announced today it has closed an $85M USD growth round to bring total capital raised to over $100M USD. The round was co-led by Inovia Capital and Lion Capital with participation from Acrew DCF, Thayer Ventures and Full In Partners, and included existing investors Telstra Ventures and Bee Partners. Snapcommerce will use the investment to expand into new consumer verticals executing its broader vision of improving the way people shop on their phones.

Snapcommerce is a flexible, AI-driven platform that is vertical-agnostic and uses messaging to personalize the mobile shopping experience and deliver the best promotional prices. Snapcommerce is projected to cross over $1B USD in total mobile sales in 2021. Over 100 Million messages have been exchanged with over 10 Million customers through the Snapcommerce platform to-date.

Snaptravel, Snapcommerce’s travel and hotel product, saved consumers over 100,000 hours of shopping time and over $75M USD in direct savings. A global source of inventory has allowed consumers to make bookings in 10,0000+ cities across 150+ countries.

“Even during the pandemic, an exceptionally challenged market for travel, Snapcommerce has been able to build trust with consumers that has naturally driven retention and sales for hotels and airlines,” said Chris Arsenault, Managing Partner at Inovia Capital. “We expect that the pent up demand for travel post-pandemic will provide tailwinds for the Snaptravel product to continue and accelerate its growth. The success during the pandemic not only signifies the strength of their leadership team, business model and platform, but shows incredible growth potential in many other consumer markets, which is backed by a powerful new wave of mobile purchasers.”

Snapcommerce sits at the intersection of Millennial and Generation Z purchasing power growth and an explosive growth trend in mobile-first behaviors. It is estimated that this demographic spends 2.5 hours (GlobalWebIndex, Q2 2020) a day on messaging apps, and over 80% of these younger consumers favored shopping on mobile devices (App Annie, July 1, 2020). Gen Z's earnings are also set to hit $33 trillion by 2030 and account for more than a quarter of all global income. By 2031, the youngest generation will surpass Millennials' spending power according to Bank of America.

“Merchants will undoubtedly need to evolve from e-commerce to m-commerce and Snapcommerce’s approach is unique in that it leverages messaging to allow brands to offer personalized promotions directly to customers,” said Sherif Guirgis, Partner of Lion Capital. “By providing AI-driven offers, merchants are able to improve conversion rate, increase profitability, and most importantly build loyalty and retention. We are thrilled to partner with Hussein, Henry and the entire Snapcommerce team.”

“We are thrilled to continue supporting Snapcommerce as they revolutionize ecommerce for the masses with sophisticated AI and messaging. The company’s record growth and resilience position it well for the future and fits squarely with our fund’s track record of backing high growth consumer tech companies with strong foundations to go public,” said Yash Patel, General Partner at Telstra Ventures.

Snapcommerce streamlines a complex and costly marketing and distribution network ‘unseen’ within the ecommerce ecosystem, to pass value down to both merchants and consumers. For a merchant to reach a customer and drive a sale, marketing and distribution can increase the price of an item by 35%. By providing private and personal one-to-one pricing over messaging, Snapcommerce cuts ‘middleman’ costs associated with affiliate marketing, sourcing, recommendations, fulfillments and loyalty programs.

“At Snapcommerce, we’ve streamlined the broken process of finding the best prices on mobile,” said Snapcommerce co-founder and CEO Hussein Fazal. “Instead of endlessly browsing or trying different coupon codes and rewards cards, we centralize and connect every touchpoint across the purchase and fulfilment journey. This makes finding the right item at the right price as easy as sending a message to a trusted friend on your phone.”

For more information, visit www.snapcommerce.com.

About Snapcommerce

Snapcommerce is a message-driven commerce platform that uses AI to connect price-conscious consumers to the best promotions on mobile. Snapcommerce is on track to cross over $1 billion in total mobile sales in 2021. The company’s flagship product, Snaptravel, provides great travel deals over SMS, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Snapcommerce was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Hussein Fazal and former Google engineer Henry Shi. For more information, visit www.snapcommerce.com and www.snaptravel.com.