Live commerce startup Shopr.tv has raised $1.7 million in funding from institutional investors, including Beenext and Y-Combinator, and angel investors like Kunal Shah from Cred.
Entrepreneurs Akhil Suhag, Akshay Suhag, Mukul Anand, and Tushar Dhara founded the startup in 2021. The startup stated it would use the funds to strengthen its technology, product, and team.
Live commerce is a relatively new trend in the e-commerce sector where a customer can purchase a product in real-time while chatting with and interacting with the seller on a live stream.
“We have the right product and team, an enthusiastic market, and now the perfect partners who share our vision,” said Suhag, cofounder and CEO of Shop.tv.
The second half of the previous decade saw a rise in the use of live commerce platforms in China. During the first 30 minutes of Alibaba’s 2020 Single’s Day sales, Taobao Live generated $7.5 billion in transactions.
The live commerce apps Trell, Simsim, and Bulbul, are all available in India. Flipkart, owned by Walmart, jumped on the live commerce bandwagon earlier this year, becoming one of the biggest e-tailers.
Flipkart is aggressively engaging in live shopping streams on its app with social media influencers and placing a significant wager on the future of live commerce.
On its platform, it has also developed a “feed” similar to the one on the photo and video-sharing app Instagram, where prominent influencers can be seen presenting various fashion items that can be purchased directly from the feed.
Amazon, a competitor of Flipkart, introduced “Amazon Live” during the just-ended festive sale, allowing content creators who debuted products to engage with customers in real-time, conduct polls and provide discounts.
By 2026, live commerce could account for 10 to 20% of all e-commerce sales, according to a McKinsey report. By 2025, the live commerce market may be worth $5 billion, according to a RedSeer report.
Along with Groww’s Lalit Keshre and Afore Capital’s Venky Karnam, angel investors Locus Ventures, Shiprocket, Goodwater Capital, and others invested in Shopr.tv during the seed investment round.
