Flash, which aims to improve the online shopping experience of users, on Wednesday announced that it raised $5.8 million in a seed round led by Global Founders Capital (GFC), White Venture Capital, Zinal Growth, Soma Capital, Emphasis Ventures and Peer Capital.
Angel investors including Binny Bansal (ex-Flipkart); Kunal Shah (Cred); Arpan Sheth (Bain & Co); Sujeet Kumar (Udaan); Nikhil Srivastava (PAG Venture); Lalit Keshre (Groww) and Rishi Vasudev (Goat Brand Labs), among others also participated in the round.
With the latest funding round, Flash will be looking to invest in product development, hiring and global expansion, the company said in a release.
Founded by former Flipkart senior vice president, Ranjith Boyanapalli, Flash aims to improve shopping experience of online shoppers. Launching in India initially, the platform aims to cater to the top 25 million power shoppers.
Flash is looking to address post-order experience, lack of rewards and cluttered communication via a unique digital shopping identity to improve the shopping experience of power shoppers.
On the platform, users will be able to track their orders placed on multiple e-commerce brands.
“Our artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML)-led platform will be backed by encryption to protect privacy and give control back to the consumer. We are aiming to onboard two million users in our first year,” Boyanapalli said.
"Power shoppers are an important consumer segment and their challenges are bound to magnify with increasing e-commerce penetration in India and globally. We are confident that Flash will make a significant impact over the coming years," said Roel Janssen, partner, Global Founders Capital.
At present, Flash is letting users register for its waitlist program before they finally get to experience its offerings. The company, however, hasn’t mentioned when the platform will go live.
Post Covid-19, India stands as the third-largest online shopper base in the world with close to 190 million shoppers in 2021. With the Indian e-commerce market estimated to increase three folds to 600-650 million by 2030, Flash aims to tap into the underlying potential, the company said.
