The BNPL Reckoning
Greetings, Pulse Subscribers!
With summer here and temperatures rising, we’ve got another edition of Pulse hot off the presses and ready to go. Here’s the agenda:
Personalization, but without cookies?
Muzak is back, baby!
Getting deliveries home
Innovations in sustainability
The dark side of BNPL
Let’s go!
Startup Deals
AI-Driven Customer Engagement | As data privacy becomes a greater concern for consumers and privacy regulations continue to evolve, e-commerce tools that have been used for personalization, like cookies and iOS-based data collection, might become a thing of the past. MoEngage offers an AI-driven customer engagement platform that allows brands and retailers to personalize without these tools. By integrating cross-platform customer data, MoEngage creates accurate customer behavior profiles that its AI uses to offer insight-led customer engagement, giving brands and retailers the power to engage customers across their life cycle. Having more than doubled its annualized recurring revenue in the last 12 months, and working with over 1,200 brands, including Flipkart, Domino's, and Nestle, MoEngage recently raised $77 million in Series E funding, led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
Audio Out-of-Home | While audio out-of-home (AOOH, aka background music) has been used to set the mood and improve the shopping experience for decades, in the 1980s, AOOH had become so hated that Ted Nugent tried to buy Muzak, then the leader of AOOH, with the express purpose of shutting it down. However, Muzak turned him down, and the genre they represent has risen considerably from those dark days. Vibenomics, a Fisher, Indiana-based startup, offers the latest in the AOOH experience. With proprietary cloud-based technology, Vibenomics brings retailers the right mix of revenue-enhancing music, self-promo ads, and paid advertising. By enhancing the vibe in the store with the right audio content, and giving retailers a new revenue stream by sharing revenue from placed paid ads, Vibenomics enables deeper in-store engagement for shoppers and stronger messaging efficacy for advertisers. With customers including Kroger and Hy-Vee, Vibenomics recently raised $12 million in Series B funding.
Last-Mile Delivery | With consumers expecting home delivery of everything from groceries and clothing to furniture and prescriptions, getting the last mile right has become crucial for every business. Onfleet, a San Francisco-based startup, helps companies launch, optimize, and scale their last-mile delivery operations. Onfleet streamlines route planning and optimization, dispatching, real-time tracking, proof of delivery, and communications, all through one platform. This ensures that last-mile delivery operations run smoothly and efficiently while exceeding customer expectations. In addition, to improve sustainability, Onfleet offers Onfleet Offset, which not only calculates a customer’s CO2 emissions but automatically offsets them via purchases of nature-based carbon credits that Onfleet matches 1:1 to double the impact. With more than 1,000 customers in 90+ countries, including Kroger, Total Wine & More, Zumiez, and Foxtrot Markets, Onfleet has powered more than 125 million deliveries with over 350 million miles tracked, and it recently raised $23 million in Series B funding.
Essential Industry Reads
With the future of the planet at stake, sustainability is something customers are starting to demand and politicians are starting to regulate, so it comes as no surprise that investors are starting to put money into it. With climate tech startups already worth $100 billion in Europe alone, serious money is now going to those looking to accelerate sustainability. In this forward-looking read, the team at Bain explores seven companies across seven different industries and the innovative sustainability solutions they’ve created to keep our planet healthy.
While the rise of buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) companies like Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay has been a huge financial success, it might not be the “better way to pay” consumers are being led to believe it is. The team at Forerunner Ventures takes a deep dive into the consumer side of BNPL and looks at how massive BNPL debt could harm not only consumers but BNPL companies as well.
Forge Retail Showcase
Our recent Showcase on the Future of Delivery was a huge success thanks to an all-star lineup of presenters including DoorDash, Food Rocket, Arive, Nuro, Manna, and Zipline. If you missed this event or want to share insights with your colleagues, click below to access the recording.
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See you in two weeks!