‘Shoppable Instagram’ raises $1.6m seed round

Goxip CEO Juliette Gimenez with co-founder YC Lau.

Last year, Juliette Gimenez and her startup Goxip participated in a startup pitch competition in her hometown, Hong Kong. It was at the Rise conference in August.

Goxip won the “breakthrough” category. It wasn’t much more than a minimum viable product, but the premise was convincing.

The app – available on web and mobile – lets you follow celebrities and then helps identify the clothing and accessories they’re wearing. Then, you’re pointed toward similar-looking items you can actually afford and buy.

“It’s a shoppable Instagram!” Juliette explains.

Shop the look

After the victory at Rise, things started moving fast. Today the startup is revealing that it has secured US$1.6m in its seed round. The two main investors are Chryseis Tan (the daughter of the founder of Malaysian conglomerate Berjaya Group) and Thailand-based Ardent Capital.

Color is easier, pattern is the next step up. The shape is the hardest thing to crack.

The deal was actually closed late last year, Juliette says. But she decided to withhold the announcement because she wanted to make sure to get the tech right so that the product would be ready to be presented to a wider audience.

With money in the bank, the team spent another four to five months perfecting Goxip’s discovery mechanism, which is based on image recognition and machine learning. It was built from scratch by Goxip’s team.

“Color is easier, pattern is the next step up. The shape is the hardest thing to crack,” Juliette recalls. “We needed to screen out the noises, skin colors and stuff.”

Later Goxip enlisted the help of Singaporean startup Visenze to help with the machine learning part.

“They have 3 years of experience and data to train the engine with. There was no way we could have caught up by doing it ourselves,” she says.

Screenshots of the mobile app.

She’s got all the credentials