Seoul-based e-commerce firm Levit, an operator of the procuring app Alwayz, needs to make the procuring expertise extra entertaining and reasonably priced. The 2-year-old startup has just lately raised $46 million in a Collection B spherical of funding led by DST World Companions with participation from new investor BOND and current backers KB Funding, Mirae Asset Capital, Korea Funding Companions, GS Ventures, and Klim Ventures. With the most recent spherical, Levit has raised a complete of $67 million since its inception.
Alwayz provides a variety of merchandise, from day by day groceries to dwelling home equipment and attire to cosmetics. Nevertheless it deviates from typical e-commerce platforms by incorporating social options like brief movies and gamification into on-line procuring to attract prospects.
For instance, customers can earn rewards by enjoying video games nurturing the pig character Don-Don-E, or obtain crops in actual life after efficiently cultivating crops by enjoying a recreation known as AI-Farm in its app. As well as, Alwayz just lately launched a “Shorts” characteristic that permits customers to look at brief movies and, in return, get reductions when procuring.
It additionally attracts prospects with low-price merchandise. Customers get reductions in the event that they buy merchandise with different customers or their mates on Alwayz. Alwayz’s C2M (consumer-to-manufacturer) mannequin removes layers of distributors, together with logistics, stock and different intermediaries, permitting the app to supply high-quality merchandise at decrease costs. Most sellers on Alwayz are producers or producers, in keeping with the corporate.
“Our common product promoting value is round 20% cheaper than the bottom costs on different e-commerce platforms,” chief govt officer and co-founder of Levit, Jaeyun Kang, mentioned. “This has been made potential as a result of lesser-known manufacturers, which historically spent practically 30-50% of the promoting value on advertising in search-based [e-commerce] platforms, can now promote their merchandise extra effectively on Alwayz by way of discovery-based procuring.”
Levit says video games and social options assist customers enter the Alwayz app day by day and be uncovered to numerous merchandise, even when they don’t instantly intend to purchase.
“As customers benefit from the partaking expertise on our platform, we leverage their excessive engagement to show them to a spread of things by way of our suggestion algorithms. This fashion, even when gadgets are from lesser-known manufacturers, prospects can uncover and purchase them,” Kang mentioned. Levit describes this consumer expertise as a “discovery procuring expertise.”
When requested about the way it ensures low-priced merchandise are high-quality, the corporate CEO mentioned its suggestion algorithms assess all gadgets on Alwayz, utilizing elements equivalent to conversion and buyer repurchase charges. “We guarantee an merchandise isn’t broadly uncovered till it has confirmed its high quality, and this strategy permits us to take care of the standard of things,” he mentioned.
Picture Credit: Levit / Alwayz
Since its launch in September 2021, the startup claims Alwayz has amassed 1 million customers inside three months and has reached 7 million customers, 2.5 million month-to-month energetic customers (MAUs) and 1.3 million day by day energetic customers (DAUs) in a single and a half years. Alwayz goals to safe greater than 12 million registered customers, 5 million MAUs, and three million DAUs by the tip of 2023, Kang mentioned, including that it has practically 20,000 sellers registered on the app.
Three founders of Levit — Kang, Sangwoo Park and Hyunjik Lee — have set their sights on two bold targets: establishing Levit because the main e-commerce firm in South Korea and capturing a major share of the worldwide discovery procuring market.
Alwayz has to compete with native friends, the likes of Coupang, Naver and Kurly, however its enterprise mannequin is extra just like the U.S.-listed e-commerce Pinduoduo and China-based AliExpress when it comes to social options and lower-price merchandise.
The outfit, which has 20 individuals on the staff, is planning to carry its platform to the U.S. market as early as this 12 months.
“Disruption in horizontal commerce is uncommon,” mentioned Daegwon Chae, normal companion of BOND. “Dislodging giant incumbents requires meaningfully higher, quicker, cheaper experiences, that are troublesome to attain in a mature and environment friendly market. Alwayz has damaged by way of with its relentless give attention to consumer expertise, engagement and worth.”