Personal blog of Yzmir Ramirez

Halla wants to answer the question of how people decide what to eat, and now has $4.5 million in fresh Series A1 capital from Food Retail Ventures to do it.

Headquartered in New York, Halla was founded in 2016 by Gabriel Nipote, Henry Michaelson and Spencer Price to develop “taste intelligence,” using human behavior to steer shoppers to food items they want while also discovering new ones as they shop online. This all results in bigger basket orders for stores. SOSV and E&A Venture Capital joined in on the round, which brings Halla’s total capital raised to $8.5 million, CEO Price told TechCrunch.

The company’s API technology is a plug-and-play platform that leverages more than 100 billion shopper and product data points and funnels it into three engines: Search, which takes into account a shopper’s preferences; Recommend, which reveals relevant complementary products as someone shops; and Substitute, which identifies replacement options.

Halla’s Substitute product was released earlier this year as an answer to better recommendations for out-of-stock items that even retailers like Walmart are creating technology to solve. Price cited a McKinsey report that found 20% of grocery shoppers sought out competitors following a negative outcome from bad substitutions.

Halla Substitute. Image Credits: Halla

None of these data points are linked to any shoppers’ private data, just the attributes around the shopping itself. The APIs, rather, are looking for context to return relevant recommendations and substitutions. For example, Halla’s platform would take into account the way someone adds items to their cart and suggest next ones: if you added turkey and then bread, the platform may suggest cheese and condiments.

“It’s also about personalization when it comes to grocery shopping and food,” Price said. “When you want organic eggs from a specific brand and it is out of stock, it is often up to your personal shopper’s discretion. We want to lead them to the right substitutions, so you can still cook the meal you intended instead of ‘close enough.’ ”

Halla’s technology is now live in more than 1,100 e-commerce storefronts. The new funding gives Halla some fuel for the fire Price said is happening within the company, including plans to double the number of stores it supports across accounts. He also expects to double employees to 30 in order to support growth and customer base, admitting there is “more inbound interest that we can handle.” Halla has been busy fast-tracking big customers for pilots, and at the same time, wants to expand internationally with additional product lines over the next 18 months.

The company is also seeing “a near infinite increase in recurring revenue,” as it attracts six- and seven-figure contracts that push the company closer to cash flow positivity. All of that growth is positioning Halla for a Series B if it needs it, Price said.

Meanwhile, as part of the investment, Food Retail Ventures’ James McCann will join Halla’s board of directors.

McCann, who only invests in food and retail technology, told TechCrunch that grocery stores need a way to inspire shoppers, that Halla is doing that and in a better way than other intelligence versions he has seen.

“Their technology is miles ahead of everyone else,” he added. “They have a terrific team and a terrific product. They are seeing huge uplifts in terms of suggestions and what people are buying, and their measurements are out of this world.”

Photo includes Halla co-founders, from left, Spencer Price (CEO), Henry Michaelson (CTO & President) and Gabriel Nipote (COO).

An Indian SaaS startup, which is increasingly courting clients from outside the country, just raised a significant amount of capital to expand its business.

Hyderabad-based Darwinbox, which operates a cloud-based human resource management platform, said on Thursday it has raised $15 million in a new financing round. The Series B round — which moves the firm’s total raise to $19.7 million — was led by Sequoia India and saw participation from existing investors Lightspeed India Partners, Endiya Partners and 3one4 Capital.

More than 200 firms — including giants such as adtech firm InMobi, fintech startup Paytm, drink conglomerate Bisleri, automobile maker Mahindra, Kotak group and delivery firms Swiggy and Milkbasket — use Darwinbox’s HR platform to serve half a million of their employees in 50 nations, Rohit Chennamaneni, co-founder of Darwinbox, told TechCrunch in an interview.

The startup, which competes with giants such as SAP and Oracle, said its platform enables a high level of configurability and ease of use, and understands the needs of modern employees. “The employees today who have grown accustomed to using consumer-focused services such as Uber and Amazon are left disappointed in their experience with their own firm’s HR offerings,” said Gowthami Kanumuru, VP Marketing at Darwinbox, in an interview.

Darwinbox’s HR platform offers a range of features, including the ability for firms to offer their employees insurance and early salary as loans. Its platform also features social networks for employees within a company to connect and talk, as well as an AI assistant that allows them to apply for a leave or set up meetings with quick voice commands from their phone.

“The AI system is not just looking for certain keywords. If an employee tells the system he or she is not feeling well today, it automatically applies a leave for them,” she said.

Darwinbox’s platform is built to handle onboarding new employees, keep a tab on their performance, monitor attrition rate and maintain an ongoing feedback loop. Or as Kanumuru puts it, the entire “hiring to retiring” cycle.

One of Darwinbox’s clients is L&T, which is tasked with setting up subways in many Indian cities. L&T is using Darwin’s geo-fencing feature to log the attendance of employees. “They are not using biometric punch machine that is typically used by other firms. Instead, they just require their 1,200 employees to check-in from the workplace using their phones,” said Kanumuru.

Additionally, Darwinbox is largely focusing on serving companies based in Asia as it believes Western companies’ solutions are not a great fit for people here, said Kanumuru. The startup began courting clients in Southeast Asian markets last year.

“Our growth is a huge validation for our vision,” she said. “Within six months of operations, we had the delivery giant Delhivery with over 23,000 employees use our platform.”

In a statement to TechCrunch, Dev Khare, a partner at Lightspeed Venture, said, “there is a new trend of SaaS companies targeting the India/SE Asia markets. This trend is gathering steam and is disproving the conventional wisdom that Asia-focused SaaS companies cannot get to be big companies. We firmly believe that Asia-focused SaaS companies can get to large impact value and become large and profitable. Darwinbox is one of these companies.”

Darwinbox’s Chennamaneni said the startup will use the fresh capital to expand its footprints in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian markets. Darwinbox also will expand its product offerings to address more of employees’ needs. The startup is also looking to make its platform enable tasks such as booking of flights and hotels.

Chennamaneni, an alum of Google and McKinsey, said Darwinbox aims to double the number of clients it has in the next six to nine months.