Price optimisation platform for e-tailers Boomerang Commerce raises $8.5M in Series A funding from Trinity Ventures, Madrona Venture

Bangalore- and California-based Boomerang Commerce India Pvt Ltd, which provides a SaaS-based price optimisation platform to online retailers, has closed $8.5 million (Rs 51 crore) in its series A round of funding from Madrona Venture Group, which was an early investor in e-commerce giant Amazon Inc, and early-stage VC firm Trinity Ventures.

Boomerang will use the funds to expand its engineering and go-to-market teams, and also to create more retail applications, the company said in a press release. As part of the deal, Karan Mehandru from Trinity and Scott Jacobson from Madrona are joining Boomerang's board.

"Price is a vital force driving online purchase decisions, and retailers need to continuously react to competitive price changes while keeping a firm eye on their profits," said Guru Hariharan, co-founder of Boomerang. "We are applying portfolio theory, real-time machine learning, and game theory to this complex problem with enables retailers to compete like never before."

Boomerang was founded in 2012 by Hariharan and Vamsi Vutukuru—both alumni of the University of Texas (Austin), and Madhusudhan Rao, an alumnus of Visvesvaraya Technological University (Karnataka). Boomerang offers a SaaS-based price optimisation platform that powers competitive pricing and assortment decisions for online retailers. The firm analyses more than 100 distinct data points per SKU (stock keeping unit), including competitors' prices to help retailers price products in real-time, balancing price-competitiveness and profitability. Boomerang claims that its platform has resulted in 5 per cent revenue lift, 20 per cent improvement in price perception index, and a 10 per cent margin lift through assortment expansion for its customers. Its customers include Staples, Sears, DHGate, Groupon Goods and RadioShack.

Boomerang has offices in Germany, Bangalore and California.

"In a world where companies like Amazon are changing price and customer experience in real-time to optimise sales, retailers cannot afford to revisiting pricing decisions on a weekly or monthly basis, and hope to survive," said Scott Jacobson, managing director of Madrona. "Guru and his team have developed technology that helps level the playing field, leveraging hundreds of millions of data points to help retailers automate and accelerate their decision-making to drive profitable growth," he added.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)