- Zycada recently announced that it emerged from stealth and raised $19 million in total funding to date
Zycada recently announced that it emerged from stealth to enable a fast online shopping experience. And Zycada’s new approach improves Time to Interact (TTI) speeds 10 times greater than Amazon thus resulting in dramatic gains in online retail revenues and empowering merchants to achieve faster online shopping experiences than Amazon for the first time.
As part of the launch, Zycada announced it raised $19 million in total funding to date with Kholsa Ventures leading the investment and Cervin Venturers and Nordic Eye Venture Capital participating. And the funding will accelerate product development further and expand the go-to-market efforts.
Plus Preetish Nijhawan, Managing Partner at Cervin Ventures and co-founder of Akamai Technologies, has joined Zycada’s Board of Directors. And Zycada also has appointed James Brear as President & CEO. Prior to joining Zycada as CEO, Brear was President & CEO of Veriflow — which was sold to VMWare in August 2019.
The e-commerce market is going to expand rapidly in the coming years especially as public health concerns radically reshape consumer behavior and further accelerate the transition from brick and mortar stores to online shopping. And even before the COVID-19 pandemic, online sales were forecasted to grow from $3.5 trillion in 2018 to $7 trillion in 2024.
Today there are 12-24 million online retailers globally with many of these online retailers lacking the infrastructure and resources to deliver e-commerce sessions that are quick and reliable. And even large e-retailers struggle to match Amazon’s speed and market dominance. TTI is an essential metric for gauging e-commerce performance, measuring how long it takes for the interactive elements of a page like a “buy now” button to load.
Zycada shatters the status quo with a platform that pushes TTI below 500 milliseconds, which significantly outpaces its rivals. And by utilizing Zycada’s innovative new approach, online retailers gain substantial improvements in conversion rate, revenue per session, and total revenue uplift.
Zycada was launched in 2016 by Subbu Varadarajan and Roy Antonyraj. And their combined experience at Akamai, Shape Security, and Symantec provided the foundation for a new vision: to leverage the power, scale, and performance of bot technology to enhance the user experience. Now Varadarajan serves as the CPO and Antonyraj is the company’s CTO.
Key Quotes:
“The e-commerce market has been growing exponentially for decades. The current pandemic will permanently alter consumer behavior in a way that will only hasten that growth. However, for the vast majority of e-retailers to capture more of this burgeoning market, they need to overcome massive speed and performance limitations. Zycada has introduced an innovative approach that eliminates these bottlenecks by employing the scale and power of bot technology in a way that’s never been done. As a result, we’re not just leveling the playing field between e-retailers and Amazon – we’re helping them rise above Amazon.”
– Zycada CEO James Brear
“Modern consumers and mobile app users are sophisticated and demand experiences that are responsive, regardless of the content. Zycada is changing the game, and creating a new standard for high-performance delivery of rich, dynamic experiences.”
– Preetish Nijhawan, Managing Partner at Cervin Ventures and co-Founder of Akamai Technologies.
“With multiple Fortune 500 customers already on our customer list, Zycada has real market momentum before they’ve even exited stealth. The team is solving a critical business problem for a target market that is being fueled by big macro trends. The appointment of James Brear as CEO is a major milestone for the company and this signals continued rapid growth. James has experience driving several high-growth startups to successful acquisitions. He’s the perfect CEO to lead Zycada during this critical next phase of growth.”
– John Hamm, Operating Partner at Khosla Ventures
