Seoul-based e-commerce firm Levit, an operator of the purchasing app Alwayz, needs to make the purchasing 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 present backers KB Funding, Mirae Asset Capital, Korea Funding Companions, GS Ventures, and Klim Ventures. With the newest spherical, Levit has raised a complete of $67 million since its inception.
Alwayz provides a variety of merchandise, from every day groceries to house home equipment and attire to cosmetics. But it surely deviates from typical e-commerce platforms by incorporating social options like brief movies and gamification into on-line purchasing to attract clients.
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 sport referred to as AI-Farm in its app. As well as, Alwayz just lately launched a “Shorts” function that enables customers to look at brief movies and, in return, get reductions when purchasing.
It additionally attracts clients 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 accordance with the corporate.
“Our common product promoting worth is round 20% cheaper than the bottom costs on different e-commerce platforms,” chief government officer and co-founder of Levit, Jaeyun Kang, mentioned. “This has been made potential as a result of lesser-known manufacturers, which historically spent almost 30-50% of the promoting worth on advertising in search-based [e-commerce] platforms, can now promote their merchandise extra effectively on Alwayz by way of discovery-based purchasing.”
Levit says video games and social options assist customers enter the Alwayz app every 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 advice algorithms. This fashion, even when objects are from lesser-known manufacturers, clients can uncover and purchase them,” Kang mentioned. Levit describes this person expertise as a “discovery purchasing expertise.”
When requested about the way it ensures low-priced merchandise are high-quality, the corporate CEO mentioned its advice algorithms assess all objects on Alwayz, utilizing components reminiscent of conversion and buyer repurchase charges. “We guarantee an merchandise isn’t broadly uncovered till it has confirmed its high quality, and this method permits us to keep up 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 lively customers (MAUs) and 1.3 million every day lively 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 almost 20,000 sellers registered on the app.
Three founders of Levit — Kang, Sangwoo Park and Hyunjik Lee — have set their sights on two bold objectives: establishing Levit because the main e-commerce firm in South Korea and capturing a big share of the worldwide discovery purchasing market.
Alwayz has to compete with native friends, the likes of Coupang, Naver and Kurly, however its enterprise mannequin is extra much 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 folks on the group, is planning to deliver its platform to the U.S. market as early as this 12 months.
“Disruption in horizontal commerce is uncommon,” mentioned Daegwon Chae, common companion of BOND. “Dislodging giant incumbents requires meaningfully higher, sooner, cheaper experiences, that are troublesome to realize in a mature and environment friendly market. Alwayz has damaged by way of with its relentless concentrate on person expertise, engagement and worth.”