- Extend — a leading provider of modern product protection — announced it raised a $40 million Series B round of funding led by Meritech Capital
Extend — a leading provider of modern product protection — announced it raised a $40 million Series B round of funding led by Meritech Capital with participation from PayPal Ventures as well as existing investors Great Point Ventures and Shah Capital Partners. Including this round of funding, the company has raised $56 million since it was founded in February 2019.
The company also announced new partnerships with Peloton, iRobot, Harman / JBL, Advance Auto Parts,Traeger Grills, BlendJet, SoClean, 1More, August Home, Balsam Hill, NewAir, Evolve Skateboards, and several others. Extend is known for enabling these merchants to offer customers an up-leveled extended warranty experience, while also increasing their margins and bottom-line profit. And this new funding will be used to continue to develop Extend’s best in class extended warranty platform, build more features, and further expand its software development and sales teams.
Extend is known for reinventing the broken and antiquated customer experience associated with extended warranties and protection plans by providing an end-to-end solution that educates consumers and guides them through the warranty purchase. As a fully licensed administrator, Extend eliminated the traditionally cumbersome and frustrating process of filing a claim by allowing customers to file and have their claim approved in seconds through their friendly customer service chatbot Kaley.
As a result, Extend has quickly become a core part of the next generation commerce stack and an essential tool for merchants who have never been able to offer extended warranties before. And Extend provides a simple way for merchants to integrate an extended warranty program into eCommerce platforms including Shopify, Magento, Big Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Hybris, 3DCart, and supports custom solutions through their easy to use APIs. Plus Extend enables protection plan sales online, in call centers, through email, with in-box offers, in-store, etc. Extended warranties provide merchants with an entirely new revenue stream and give customers greater peace of mind when making purchase decisions.
With this funding round, Extend will continue to bring on new partnerships with leading retailers across consumer electronics, sports and fitness equipment, auto parts, appliances, furniture, jewelry and watches, medical devices, glasses, etc. And Extend’s proprietary machine learning framework is able to deliver 3-4 times the average attach rate of legacy protection plans with many merchant partners seeing an attach rate of over 12%.
KEY QUOTES:
“Product protection plans can be a huge lifesaver for consumers and a powerful revenue generator for retailers. Extend is serving both of these groups by dramatically reducing integration overhead for merchants, and making extended warranties something that consumers can trust and rely on. This new funding will help us to continue Extend’s rapid growth with a keen focus on elevating the merchant and consumer experience, which will in turn drive brand loyalty as we build the leading modern extended warranty platform.”
“In addition to our funding and new merchant partnerships, we have some very exciting plans for Extend as we look ahead. We are preparing to expand our team by more than 100 people to well over 200, by the end of 2021. We are building out in-house underwriting capabilities, and working on additional features and infrastructure that will continue to significantly distance Extend from the rest of the market.”
— Woodrow Levin, CEO and Co-Founder of Extend
“Meritech always strives to work with companies that are seeking to define the future of an industry, and that’s exactly what Extend is doing with its platform. Extend is filling a huge gap in the eCommerce infrastructure market by streamlining the process for merchants to offer extended warranties and protection plans on their products, and providing a seamless customer experience for consumers from start to finish. We’re eager to see what’s next.”
— Alex Clayton, General Partner at Meritech Capital
“Merchants of all sizes can benefit from extended warranties but implementing and maintaining them has been too complex for many businesses. Extend shares PayPal’s commitment to providing merchants with easy to use tools that help them better connect with and support their customers. On top of that, the Extend team has seriously improved the end-user experience through its use of their conversational chatbot. We’re excited to invest in Extend as it continues to redefine this space.”
— Jay Ganatra, Partner at PayPal Ventures
“Extended warranties have long been a part of the electronics industry, but Extend is the first company that’s truly made the warranty process easy and appealing for our customers. Extend’s seamless integration with our commerce channels has allowed Harman / JBL to stand up a best in class program that will drive incremental revenue with minimal effort. Consumers have even greater trust in our offerings now thanks to Extend’s protection plans and first-rate claim service.”
— Dave Spinato, Vice President of Global eCommerce at HARMAN International
