Retail Software Startup LightSpeed Raises $35 Million From iNovia

While e-commerce is huge and growing, about 90 percent of all purchases still happen offline. LightSpeed wants to provide the software and services that help brick-and-mortar retailers increase sales and improve the general customer experience. To do that, the company has raised $35 million in Series B funding from iNovia Capital, with participation from previous investor Accel Partners.

LightSpeed targets brick-and-mortar retailers that have relatively high transaction values and volume, focusing mostly on verticals like apparel, bikes, pet stores and the like. It has about 20,000 retailers signed up and the average customer does about a half a million dollars in retail per year, according to CEO Dax Dasilva. It process about $7.5 billion in annual transactions for those customers. That’s due in part to a number of features that it’s added to its platform over the last few years.

LightSpeed is more than just a point-of-sale system for retailers. It provides a cloud-based platform for retailers to manage sales and inventory, as well as tools they can use to build branded iPad apps. Those apps can aid sales associates in-store to help customers find products they want and make suggestions for other related items they can purchase.

It also helps offline retailers get online, with easy-to-use tools for building an e-commerce store. That helps retailers reach customers who aren’t able to visit one of their stores.

Its platform provides an analytics suite to give retailers a deeper view into their business. That includes the ability to offer up data related to cross-channel sales (i.e. both online and retail), as well as supporting multi-store analysis for retailers that have more than one location.

With its latest release, LightSpeed is also adding payments into its platform, enabling retailers to sell goods directly through its platform without having to deal with a third-party payments processor. Through a partnership with Vantiv, LightSpeed will offer customers a flat-rate pricing model for payments processed on it platform.

With the latest funding, LightSpeed has raised a total of $65 million. The company is headquartered in Montreal, but has 200 employees spread out through a number of different offices, including one in Silicon Valley, one in Washington state, and a sales office in New York City.