This startup has a secret weapon for ecommerce sites to beat Amazon

Photo credit: Tech in Asia’s Andre Gunawan.

Ethnic fashion portal CBazaar relies on technology to enhance its user experience – a key to success in ecommerce. The tech comes from Bangalore-based startup Unbxd which drives 75 percent of the sales on the site.

With the growth in number of products available on CBazaar, it needed personalized recommendations for different users on its geographically distributed websites in India, Australia, the UK, and the US. This is what the analytics engine of Unbxd provides to increase conversions for around 200 ecommerce sites in 40 countries.

We handle around 200 million transactions a month, which is equivalent in scale to India’s two ecommerce leaders Flipkart and Snapdeal combined.

“Search is an unsolved problem in ecommerce,” says Pavan Sondur, CEO and co-founder of Unbxd. “Say you have a crimson dress and you are looking for a pair of shoes to match that dress. That ecommerce site might not have the word crimson in its catalog. It might have the shoes you need tagged under red, but you get a ‘no results found’,” he points out.

“Now, if the site can emulate how an offline sales person would behave and shows you what you might like, you could end up buying the shoes you need,” continues Pavan. “The artificial intelligence technology needed to actually do this is complex. That is what we’re doing for ecommerce sites.”

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Scaling up fast

Photo Credit: Karen Roe.

Pavan was talking to Tech in Asia in the context of its series B funding today from Nirvana Venture Advisors, with the participation of existing investors IDG Ventures, Inventus Capital, and Indian Angel Network. The amount of funding was not disclosed, but it’s meant for a fast scaling up and expansion globally.

Unbxd already handles around 200 million transactions a month, which is equivalent in scale to India’s two ecommerce leaders Flipkart and Snapdeal combined. “We are processing US$2.5 million to US$5 million in GMV on the platform – putting all of our customers together. We are aiming to scale that up 10 times by the end of this year,” says Pavan.

Unbxd, which was founded in 2011, is now seeing the biggest demand in North America for its SaaS (software-as-a-service) search tool. In hindsight, Pavan feels it was slow to go to the US. “The opportunity and market there is much bigger than we estimated. We launched in the US in the second half of 2014. We should have done it much earlier.”

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