 "Unbxd")
It was conceived at a time when it was trendy to give unusual names to companies. That explains its name, which has no vowels. Bengaluru-based Unbxd (pronounced Unboxed) provides search, navigation and product recommendations to e-commerce companies. Started by two engineers, Pavan Sondur and Prashant Kumar, in 2011, the company says it doubles its revenue in every six months. It recently raised an undisclosed amount from Nirvana Venture Advisors to fund its aggressive expansion plans.
Sondur, co-founder and chief executive officer of Unbxd, thought of the concept while working at a US-based start-up called Gluster. At that time, e-commerce websites had begun to make their presence felt. While going through one of them, he realised finding a right product was a nightmare. "It was easy to search products on Google rather than on the websites offering them. That was the time we decided to develop a product to make the e-commerce experience a pleasant one," says Sondur.
Business model
The product thus conceived has found acceptance from around 100 e commerce companies, most of them are outside the country. Unbxd product powers about 3,000 e-commerce sites clocking gross merchandised value of $5 billion a year. The company charges a fee for the amount of traffic comes to e-commerce sites that uses its platform.
"Our products make it easier for e-commerce players to showcase targeted and relevant products and recommendations to visitors and track visitor interactions," says Sondur. This means, every time you visit an e-commerce site, the kind of products you search and show interest in will be tracked and the information will be used to help you choose products of your choice on your next visit.
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Area of business: Site search optimisation software for e-commerce firms Year of incorporation: 2011 Founders: Pavan Sondur and Prashant Kumar Funding: Raised two rounds, first in 2013 and second one in May 2016 Investors: Indian Angel Network, IDG Ventures, Inventus Capital Partners and Nirvana Customer base: Powering 3,000 e-commerce websites Revenue source: 80% from the US |
A typical e-commerce site offers a number of products - sometimes running into thousands. For a buyer, searching the right product he or she is looking for becomes a time-consuming exercise. Unbxd products help e-commerce companies enhance customer experience by taking care of this aspect. And, like a good neighbourhood shop, Unbxd software helps e-commerce sites track the kind of products that customers are looking for. "We have been using Unbxd products for two years now and they have helped us a lot," says Deepak Sharma, product manager at Pepperfry.
The company's customers include Askmebazaar and CaratLane in India. Most of its customers are US-based. And, they include players such as Ashley Furniture, Newegg.com and Express. The US accounts for nearly 80 per cent of company's revenue and 20 per cent comes from India and Asia-Pacific region.
"Right now, the company is focused on being the category leader. We all know that in the technology space, the winner takes all. So, revenue and profitability is bound to follow," says Sharad Sharma of Indian Angel Investor, one of the investors in the company.
A few months after its inception, the company got seed funding from Indian Angel Network in 2012. Since then, there has been two more rounds of funding. In 2013, the company raised $2 million in series-A round of funding from IDG Ventures and Inventus Capital Partners.
Last month, the company again raised an undisclosed amount from Nirvana Venture. The latest round has been done to fuel its aggressive expansion. The company plans to take its total head count to 100 in the next two months. The current employee base stands at 65.
The road ahead
The company has formidable competitors like Oracle and Apache Solr. Experts say the strength of its competitors poses a significant challenge, going forward. Google, too, was present in the e-commerce search space but has opted out now, leaving the field wide open for others. Another source of challenge for Unbxd could be the potential shake up in the e-commerce space. Since big players such as Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal prefer to have in-house products to track consumer behaviour on their platform, most Unbxd customers are relatively small players in the e-commerce market. In case of any shake up, smaller players are more likely take a bigger hit. And, they are the ones whom Unbxd serves.
Company officials, though, are not perturbed. "The US is our biggest market and many of our clients there are big enough to weather any business cycle. Our challenge, however, is to scale up the business in the US with the help of a large pool of Indian engineers," says Sondur. The US is the company's biggest market, where the company is pushing for further growth. With well-funded competitors, it is not to be an easy proposition.
| EXPERT TAKE |
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I see Unbxd as an arms merchant providing differentiated technology capability to brands and retailers to keep up with the big boys like Amazon at a fraction of the cost. Unbxd's offerings to e-commerce sites (and apps) range from on-site product discovery, navigation and personalised experience such as recommendations. It differentiates itself by enabling merchants to continue to offer relevant products as they scale up operations while retaining control over their promotions. Most importantly, adoption of Unbxd is made easier through their plug-n-play approach where these retailers could benefit from its technology without having to rip apart their existing legacy site search infrastructure; and able to migrate more and more functionality to Unbxd at a pace they are comfortable with. Their primary market is mostly in the US. An Indian start-up competing against well-funded American technology companies for American customers will be their biggest challenge. Their customer traction so far shows they are up to the challenge.
Venkat Raju, angel investor and CEO of Kyron Global Corporate Accelerator |
