Sqwad raises €3m to help online brands sell more together and lower their customer acquisition costs
Sqwad, the platform that reinvents online brand partnerships and creates branded universes, announces a fundraising of €3m from Samaipata, an investment fund specialized in tech. Sqwad was founded by Anis Chagar, former Kearney consultant with a focus in eCommerce, Mohcine Heddi, former software engineer at the « Paris Brain Institute », and Mehdi Rifai, ex data scientist and product manager at Criteo.
Sqwad halts online CAC explosion by reducing brands’ dependence on walled gardens Google, Facebook and Instagram
Stricter privacy rules, the disappearance of the tracking cookies and web giants platform saturation due to the multiplication of advertisers are significantly increasing eshops customer acquisition costs. It is therefore important for online brands to rethink their growth and diversify their acquisition channels.B2C customer acquisition cost has increased by 80% in the last 3 years.
This is especially true for DNVBs for which 84% of acquisition comes from paid channels. These figures are completely unprecedented ! Sqwad offers an alternative to get new customers at a lower cost by focusing on sharing audiences and exchanging visibility. The start-up develops tools that allow brands to think of partnership as a strategic growth lever to collaborate and prosper together. With the help of their proprietary algorithm, Sqwad allows brands sharing the same values to convert highly qualified customers through cross-advertising and cross-selling.
The platform offers an alternative to retailers looking to reduce their acquisition cost for sustainable growth. According to Anis Chagar, CEO and co-founder of Sqwad: “Sqwad offers a collaborative system to help brands diversify their acquisition channels and reduce their dependence on walled gardens.
Partnerships have been at the root of retail, and we would like to get back to it. Sqwad allows brands to sell more together and everywhere. According to our early numbers, brands are seeing conversion rates on our platform 8-10 times higher than other channels like Google, Facebook and Instagram.”
The fundraising and the expertise of pan-European Samaipata fund will allow the startup to recruit mainly in the tech and marketing teams in order to launch quickly on the European market. Sqwad’s ambition is to be the European player that revolutionizes the way brands think about e-commerce.
“E-commerce is constantly growing and will exceed €820bn in Europe in 2022. The cookie deprecation and the intensification of the legislation concerning personal data, is toughening the way brands acquire and retain their customers. Sqwad meets a real need, and we are convinced that this startup will actively participate in the future of e-commerce” Aurore Falque-Pierrotin, partner at Samaipata.
The startup currently counts in its community the most promising DNVBs, including Krème, Smoon, Bandit, Atelier Particulier, or Perus.
Juliette Lailler, co-founder from Krème : “Brand partnership is a strong way to acquire new customers, just look at all the collabs! With Sqwad, we can target loyal customers from like-minded brands, and with lower acquisition cost compared to the regular paid marketing.”
