Gift-giving is not always easy, but Goody wants to make it as easy as sending a text.
The Miami-based company launched in December 2020 with a curated list of gifts from robes to cookies to succulents to spa treatments. You can choose a gift without having to know what size is needed, and the recipient can choose the size or kind, or swap out the gift for one of similar price.
Goody gift app. Image Credits: Goody
Goody started as a consumer app and now also includes a website called Goody+ for business-to-business gifting. Since Goody+ launched in April, more than 1,000 companies have used the service.
The company is on a roll over the past 11 months, having now raised its third round this year, a $15 million round in what co-founder and CEO Edward Lando called “step-up” funding from SoftBank through its Latin America Fund.
“After raising a $13.1 million Series A earlier this year with NEA and a $4 million seed round with Index, we had plenty of runway,” Lando told TechCrunch. “We spent money on the team, but we had a lot of interest, and the holiday season is big for e-commerce companies, so we decided to not do a full Series B — we’ll do that next year — but take money at higher terms to help us expand.”
Now having taken in about $32 million in a short period of time, Goody is focused on expanding its existing products, features and services for corporate gifting, including future brand partnerships. Some of the new features include a gamified way of requesting birthdays in the app where users receive points.
The consumer app and desktop tool combined have seen 5,000% growth during the second and third quarters of 2021, and Lando said that the volume of gifts sent in September and October grew by 615%.
“We’re pumped to be investing in Goody,” said Shu Nyatta, managing partner at SoftBank Latin America Fund, in a written statement. “There is so much white space in corporate gifting and employee engagement. It’s exciting to see a team bring a delightful, consumer-grade approach to the space. We look forward to helping Goody scale their offering beyond the U.S. and into Latin America.”
Goody is the latest company to attract funding for gift-giving, especially on the corporate side, which was estimated to be a $242 billion market. So far this year, Reachdesk bagged $43 million, while Sendoso brought in $100 million and Alyce raised $30 million.
Lando is eager to bite into a bigger piece of that pie to propel Goody to the level of “leading employer happiness and engagement platform in the U.S.” by next year. In addition to Latin America, having grown up in France, he is also eyeing other countries for expansion.