Blidz founders Lasse Diercks and Markus Haverinen | Image credit: Blidz
Helsinki-based Blidz, a social shopping app combining gamification and social group buying, announced on Wednesday that it has raised €6M in its Seed round of funding.
The startup says that the proceeds will be used to accelerate its growth across Western markets and to expand its supply chain and product suite.
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Investors in this round
The investment was led by General Catalyst, a venture capital firm that makes early-stage and transformational investments, and Amsterdam-based Peak Capital, a VC firm that is 100 per cent backed and run by entrepreneurs who founded tech juggernauts like Booking.com and entrepreneurs across diverse industries from logistics to FMCG and beyond.
The round also saw participation from D4 Ventures, Fabric Ventures, FJ Labs as well as existing investor IPR.VC. A group of angel investors, such as Youngme Moon and Christopher North, also joined in the round.
Adam Valkin, MD at General Catalyst, says, “The Blidz founding team has a number of unique insights relating to the evolution of online commerce. They are creating a new customer experience in the West by combining social media, gaming and shopping into a data-driven entertaining and easy-to-use platform. We’re excited to see what emerges from this talented team.”
A social shopping app
Founded in 2017 by Lasse Diercks and Markus Haverinen, Blidz aims to disrupt the traditional online shopping model in Western markets by liberating users from expensive and boring shopping experiences.
Blidz is a social shopping app that combines social group buying, gamification and shopping features to allow users to leverage their own activity and social networks to get value-for-money products at a ‘significant’ discount.
Their portfolio consists of selected products ranging from consumer electronics, fashion, groceries, and home and gardening products all the way to virtual items that can be purchased in the app.
Lasse Diercks says, “Western online shopping is behind the curve on social adoption. Our goal is to liberate consumers from expensive and boring shopping experiences by letting them leverage their own activity and social networks to get the best value-for-money products anywhere. Western consumers embrace social and gamified solutions. We see that there is large untapped potential in e-commerce to put our users first and continue building our value-capturing shopping app.”
According to Blidz, it is using value-for-money products as its spearhead catering to a large audience. Key early-adopters include women in both rural and urban areas as well as Gen-Z’s and students, who are looking for the best deals online, preferably together with friends.
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