Business-to-business SaaS (software-as-a-service) company Anakin, that enables e-commerce companies to see their competitors’ live pricing data, has raised $2 million in a Seed funding round from YCombinator, HOF Capital, Austen Allred, ACE & Company, Integrity, Pioneer Fund and a group of other angel investors, the company said in a statement on Monday.
The company will be using the funds to enhance its software and hire additional employees to increase its presence in other geographies, the statement said. Anakin currently has a presence in India, San Francisco and Singapore. The company will also invest in product development, expanding into other categories, and creating a self-service tool.
Founded by Mohit Prateek and Rashmi Bala in September 2020, Anakin helps e-commerce stores and brands increase their revenue using pricing, products and trends data, both from their competitors and markets.
The platform comprises dynamic pricing software that helps to set pricing to better profit margins based on the prices or stock availability. Anakin’s platform also offers competitive intelligence based on stock levels, product visibility, new launches, promotional events, and product attributes. The platform tracks and categorises all the data using AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine learning.
The company is betting on the increasing penetration of e-commerce across the world, and said that e-commerce companies face issues in maintaining data and pricing millions of products across geographies accurately, which Anakin’s platform helps them with.
“E-commerce is rife with competition. We help companies and brands in optimising all variables, not just pricing and help them grow faster. Our customers like us very much and recommend Anakin to others,” said Prateek, Co-founder, Anakin.
The company counts Flipkart, RedMart and Nike among its clients, and claims that its platform has helped these companies in increasing their revenues by as much as 12%. The company, which is live in more than 12 countries, also claims to be growing at 24% on a month-on-month basis.
“We extract billions of data points and use machine learning to derive actionable insights for our customers,” said Rashmi Bala, Co-founder, Anakin.
Anakin started in the grocery space, and expanded to the food delivery, ride-sharing and travel segments. The company said it is aiming to create self-serve platforms for smaller ecommerce companies, brands and mom-and-pop stores.
