– USA, CA – Index, a leading retail software company that brings measurement and personalisation to the offline world, announced today that it has raised $19 million in Series B funding led by General Catalyst, along with Datalogix founder Rob Gierkink. The new capital will be used to accelerate Index’s deployment to grocery, apparel and quick-service retail environments; reach new customers across the U.S.; and grow its engineering, product and business teams.
Gierkink, an XIR (Executive-in-Residence) at General Catalyst, will chair Index’s board of directors. David Fialkow, General Catalyst co-founder and a managing director, also is joining Index’s board.
“Rob and David’s tremendous expertise will help us transform offline retail and continue to bring ecommerce advantages to brick-and-mortar environments,” said Jonathan Wall, Index co-founder and CTO. “The commerce ecosystem cannot work to its full potential until retailers recognize, remember and reward their customers in-store.”
As chairman of the board, Gierkink will leverage his deep domain expertise to help Index accelerate its growth. Prior to founding Datalogix, Gierkink co-founded three of the world’s largest cross-merchant loyalty programs: Loyalty Management Group (LMG), which operates Nectar in the United Kingdom; Air Miles Reward Program in Canada; and Air Miles Program in the Netherlands. Datalogix, which was hatched at General Catalyst and then acquired by Oracle in 2014, aggregates and provides insights on over $2 trillion in consumer spending to deliver purchase-based targeting and drive more sales.
“When we started Air Miles, Nectar and Datalogix, our aim was to help retailers connect with their customers, and Index is transforming the way retailers engage with shoppers,” said Gierkink. “We have a shared vision of reinventing retail and are excited to work with Index during the next phase of its growth.”
“Index is tackling one of retail’s most complex challenges — delivering truly personalized, data-driven, cross-channel shopping experiences,” said Fialkow. “Marc and Jonathan have established Index as an emerging leader in a space we know well through our experience growing Datalogix with Rob. We are thrilled to collaborate with the Index team and again with Rob to shape the next generation of commerce.”
Index’s platform enables retailers to:
Secure In-Store Payments — Index Semi-Integrated Payments for Verifone and Ingenico devices and Index Hosted Gateway for First Data, Vantiv, Chase Paymentech and Worldpay provide turnkey solutions for EMV, P2PE and processing flexibility—at a lower overall cost. Retailers can also easily accept a variety of tender types, including Apple Pay and Android Pay.
Build a Unified Customer Database — Index uses customer payment cards as unique identifiers and captures line-item data to build an account for every shopper, unified across stores and online.
Additionally, Index software seamlessly enables customers to opt-in for e-receipts, loyalty and personalized marketing directly on the PIN pad at checkout.
Personalize Shopping Experiences — A unified customer database gives retailers a unique advantage to benchmark customer health and deliver personalized experiences. For the first time, retailers can easily measure same-customer sales in their physical environments. Furthermore, Index’s intelligent algorithms leverage customer purchase history, enabling retailers to deliver personalized experiences on the channels where customers engage — email, mobile and in-store.
Since raising a $7 million Series A in 2013, Index has launched with top national retailers, including American Apparel, The Fresh Market, New Seasons Market, New Leaf, Fairway, Tender Greens, Cava Grill and Dig Inn, among others.
This May, The Fresh Market, which operates 177 stores in 24 states, deployed an e-receipt program using Index technology. The program offers The Fresh Market customers personalized communications and recommendations, in addition to emailed receipts. Preliminary results show that The Fresh Market is on track to significantly increase the number of customers signed up for its email communications, and the program offers potential for further personalized offers and rewards in the near future.
“We believe that personalized marketing offers great potential to engage our customers with more relevant communication,” said Chris Miller, Vice President, Strategy and Marketing at The Fresh Market. “Through our partnership with Index, we are eager to leverage insights about our customers’ preferences and purchase behavior, allowing us to engage each individual around our brand in increasingly customized ways.”
Fairway Market, a leading food retailing destination in the Greater New York City metropolitan area, has also deployed Index across all locations.
“Since implementation, Index has supplied a secure transmission of data and reduced our gateway cost by 35 percent,” said Maureen Minard, CIO of Fairway Market. “Having the ability to reach our customers in a new way will move us towards increased customer interaction.”
Index’s full set of solutions—including payments, security, marketing, analytics and loyalty—enables grocery, apparel and quick service retailers to future-proof payments and modernize their business. Index leverages strong partnerships with leading POS platforms, PIN pad providers and payment processors to continue to elevate the in-store experience and transform online and offline retail.
“Together with Rob, David and the General Catalyst team, we’re excited to help power the next generation of physical retail,” said Marc Freed-Finnegan, Index co-founder and CEO. “We have a tremendous team that’s passionate about helping retailers reconcile customer experiences across channels and build lifelong customer loyalty.”
About Index
Index, based in San Francisco, is a leading retail software company that combines secure payments and personalized marketing to transform offline retail. Index provides a semi-integrated payments solution and fully hosted gateway for turnkey EMV, point-to-point encryption (P2PE) and processing flexibility. Its unique point-of-sale (POS) integration enables retailers to build an account for every shopper, unify customer profiles across channels, drive opt-in to deliver personalised marketing, and optimize every campaign.
About General Catalyst Partners
General Catalyst Partners is a venture capital firm that makes early-stage and transformational investments. The firm backs exceptional entrepreneurs who are building innovative technology companies and market leading businesses, including Airbnb, BigCommerce, ClassPass, Datalogix, Datto, Demandware, Gusto (fka ZenPayroll), The Honest Company, HubSpot, KAYAK, Oscar, Snapchat, Stripe, and Warby Parker. The General Catalyst partnership leverages its broad experience to help founders build market-leading businesses. General Catalyst has offices in Cambridge, MA, Palo Alto, CA and New York City.
About The Fresh Market
Founded in 1982, The Fresh Market, Inc. is a specialty grocery retailer focused on providing high-quality products in a unique and inviting atmosphere with a high level of customer service. The company operates 177 stores in 24 states across the U.S. The Fresh Market is an equal opportunity employer.
About Fairway
Fairway Market is a food retailer offering customers a differentiated one-stop shopping experience “Like No Other Market”. Fairway has established itself as a leading food retailing destination in the Greater New York City metropolitan area, with stores that emphasize an extensive selection of fresh, natural and organic products, prepared foods and hard-to-find specialty and gourmet offerings, along with a full assortment of conventional groceries. Fairway is headquartered in New York, New York. You can shop our products online at www.shop.fairwaymarket.com, or visit one of our 15 stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
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