Blidz raises €6 million

Finnish social shopping app Blidz has raised 6 million euros in Seed funding. The company will use the funding to accelerate its growth in Western markets. Additionally, the funding will be used to expand the product suite and supply chain.

Blidz was founded in Finland, with the ambition to transform Western ecommerce through social and gamified mechanics. Users can buy millions of products through the app together at a significant discount.

‘Blidz has a user base growth of 1500% a year.’

After its launch in 2018, the company has seen its user base grow by 1500 percent a year. Early users of the app were women in rural and urban areas, as well as Gen-Z’s and students. According to Blidz, these consumers are looking for the best deals online and depend on recommendations from people they know.

Social shopping app

The idea of social shopping is that users buy a product of their choice and then share that on social media in order to get acquaintances to buy the same thing. If someone does, the user gets the item for the discounted amount (which can be up to a 95 percent discount). If no one buys the same product, the user will receive store credit from Blidz.

‘Western online shopping is behind on social adoption.’

This way of shopping is not very popular in the West yet, but there are numerous apps using these mechanics in China. “Western online shopping is behind the curve on social adoption. Our goal is to liberate consumers from expensive and boring shopping experiences by letting them leverage their own activity and social networks to get the best value-for-money products anywhere”, said co-founder Lasse Diercks.

Seed funding

Currently, the shopping app has a product range going from consumer electronics, fashion, groceries, home and gardening products and virtual items. In order to grow the product suite and supply chain, the company raised 6 million euros in Seed funding. The round was led by General Catalyst and Peak. Investors that participated are D4 Ventures, Fabric Ventures, FJ Labs and existing investor IPR.VC.

“Western consumers embrace social and gamified solutions. We see that there is large untapped potential in ecommerce to put our users first and continue building our value-capturing shopping app. Having General Catalyst and Peak on board makes us fully equipped to change Western ecommerce as never been seen before”, said Diercks.

‘Western consumers embrace social and gamified solutions.’

Adam Valkin, Managing Director at General Catalyst commented on the investment: “the Blidz founding team has a number of unique insights relating to the evolution of online commerce. They are creating a new customer experience in the West by combining social media, gaming and shopping into a data-driven entertaining and easy-to-use platform. We’re excited to see what emerges from this talented team.”