Friday, July 18, 2014

Former Amazon & eBay exec helps retailers take on Amazon with newly funded startup

Former Amazon & eBay exec helps retailers take on Amazon with newly funded startup

Amazon and eBay veteran, Guru Hariharan, is ready to revolutionize the way retailers price and sell products. His company, Boomerang Commerce, announced today $8.5 million in its first round of institutional financing from Trinity Ventures and Madrona Venture Group.


Boomerang Commerce’s newest concept, a retail application called Dynamic Price Optimizer, is poised to take on top online retailers by leveraging real-time analytics for companies to drive more business. Companies already using the Dynamic Price Optimizer have seen an increase in online revenue of 5 percent, on average, according to the company.


Boomerang’s Dynamic Price Optimizer aims to help retailers re-price millions of products in real-time to balance price perception and profitability by analyzing more than 100 pieces of data per SKU, including competitor pricing. The application tests, measures, and implements pricing strategies on a continuing basis. The pricing strategies are made by leveraging optimization criteria selected by the retailer.


“Price is a key factor driving online purchase decisions, and retailers need to continuously react to competitive price changes while keeping a firm eye on their profits,” says Guru Hariharan, founder and CEO of Boomerang Commerce, in a statement on the news.


“We’re applying portfolio theory, real-time machine learning, and game theory to this complex problem, enabling retailers to compete like never before.”


Boomerang Commerce will use the $8.5 million in new financing to aggressively grow the engineering and go-to-market teams, while also building additional retail applications to support the platform. As a result of the latest round of funding, Karan Mehandru of Trinity Ventures and Scott Jacobson of Madrona Venture Group will join Boomerang’s board.


“For the vast majority of consumers, price is the most important factor in purchasing decisions,” stated Karan Mehandru in a release.


“Furthermore, with mobile devices, it’s virtually effortless for people to do price comparisons, which has led companies like Amazon to build large teams who use highly sophisticated technology to outprice their competitors. Boomerang’s technology and product level the playing field for the rest of the retail universe by giving them the power of dynamic pricing in an easy-to-adopt and use SasS platform.”


Top companies like Staples, Groupon Goods, DHGate, and RadioShack are already using the Dynamic Price Optimizer and seeing positive results.


Boomerang Commerce is located in the Silicon Valley with a product development center in Bangalore.ff


Former Amazon & eBay exec helps retailers take on Amazon with newly funded startup

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