In recent months there’s been growing buzz here in Israel around a small startup called The Gifts Project. Today, the startup is announcing a $1 million financing round led by Gemini Israel Funds. This follows a seed investment back in 2009 by Dr. Yossi Vardi.
With The Gifts Project, online retailers will be able to offer groups of people the ability to chip-in and buy a gift together for a mutual friend, colleague, or family member. A pretty simple idea with a promising potential considering social commerce is going gangbusters.
What makes The Gifts Project compelling in my opinion is not only the size of opportunity in social commerce, but that it’s designed to sit rather cozily within the online purchase flow. This is because, rather than a destination play, The Gifts Project is designed as a white-label solution with the intent of helping online retailers significantly raise their average sale price.
The solution, which is being kept under wraps until a debut in January, will include an analytics dashboard and a Facebook application that mirrors the group shopping functionality to be offered on the retailer’s website. There’s will also be a gift suggestion engine that leverages the recipient’s likes/interests/demographics—data pulled from his or her Facebook profile.
In fact, The Gifts Project will rely heavily on Facebook Connect to facilitate the entire user flow, from Organizer (person initiating the gift buying), to Contributors (the folks chipping-in), to the Recipient (person to receive the gift). Ron Gura, CEO, tells me that Facbook integration will not be a pre-requisite to facilitate the entire purchase process, but will certainly help.
We’ll follow-up with the company when it debuts next month. In the mean time, online retailers can sign up for access at GiftsProject.com.
The Gifts Project is a social ecommerce platform for Group Gifting that helps online retailers, marketplaces and gift stores to leverage their social buying experience. This white label solution brings major ecommerce websites a Social Group Gifting Platform with a winning combination of Social Networks and Group Payment straight to their checkout process. With Group Gifting, customers can share their special occasions with their social graph by letting friends to chip in for each others gifts while shopping at...
Yossi Vardi is an Israeli investor most famous for being the original investor in ICQ—the first Internet-wide instant messaging system. Vardi has invested in over 50 tech companies in diverse areas of software, energy, Internet, mobile, cleantech, and others. Vardi has been an active civil servant in Israel through projects involving energy and infrastructure. He also co-founded Alon, an Israeli oil company. Vardi acted as an advisor to the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program on issues of...
Since 1993, Gemini Israel Funds has helped many of Israel’s most talented entrepreneurs to build innovative and world-changing companies. With over $700M under management, Gemini invests in early stage and growth-stage companies across a range of industries including communications, consumer electronics, enterprise software, Internet software and services, semiconductors, and environmental technologies. The companies backed by our investment professionals include Allot Communications, Ceragon Networks, Commtouch, Diligent Technologies, Mellanox Technologies, Outbrain, Passave, Precise Software Solutions, PrimeSense, Saifun Semiconductors, Traiana, Takadu, Verisity,...
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