ReCharge, a provider of e-commerce subscription management software, announced today that it raised $ 227 million in a $ 2.1 billion B series growth round.
Summit Partners, ICONIQ Growth, and Bain Capital Ventures provided capital.
Notably, Santa Monica, California-based ReCharge was restarted for several years before raising $ 50 million in a previously undisclosed A series from Summit Partners in January 2020. It is currently a positive cash flow, according to company executives. With this round, ReCharge raised a total of $ 277 million in financing.
Over the years, the company's SaaS platform has evolved from a subscription billing / payments platform to include a broader set of offerings aimed at helping e-commerce businesses increase revenue and lower operating costs.
Specifically, the cloud-based ReCharge program is designed to give e-commerce merchants a way to offer and manage subscriptions for physical products. It also aims to help these brands, primarily directly to consumer companies, grow by providing them with ways to "easily" add subscription offers to their businesses with the goal of converting one-off buyers "into loyal, repeat customers."
The company has some impressive growth metrics, and it's undoubtedly driven in part by pushing the COVID-19 pandemic into all things digital. ReCharge ARR grew 146% in 2020, while revenue grew over 136% over the same period, according to co-founder and CEO Oisin O’Connor, although he declined to reveal the flat numbers. The startup has 15,000 customers and 20 million subscribers in 180 countries on its platform. Clients include Harry’s, Oatly, Fiji Water, Billie and Native. But even before the pandemic, it had doubled its treatment volume every year over the past five years and processed more than $ 5.3 billion in transactions since it began in 2014.
ReCharge also has 328 employees, up from 140 in January 2020.
"We've seen many brick and mortar stores, like Oatly, offer their products through subscriptions as a result of the pandemic in 2020," O'Connor told TechCrunch. “Some categories like Food, Beverages and Pet Food were some of the fastest growing sectors in total subscribers, with increases of 100% and 147% respectively, as non-discretionary spending shifted online.
He was surprised to see that the growth also extended beyond the most obvious categories. For example, ReCharge saw beauty care product subscribers grow 120% last year.
"Overall, we saw 91% growth in subscribers in 2020 across all subscription classes," O'Connor told TechCrunch. “We believe a combination of factors are at play: the epidemic, the increase in physical subscriptions, and the rise of direct consumer buying.”
ReCharge plans to use its new capital to accelerate employment in both research and development (engineering and product) and market transition functions such as sales, marketing, and customer success. It plans to continue its expansion into other e-commerce platforms such as BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Magento, and outside North America into other geographic markets, starting with Europe. ReCharge also plans to "expand" its acquisition reach so that it can "accelerate" its time to market in certain areas, according to O’Connor, and of course build on its products and services.
Yoonkee Sull, a partner at ICONIQ Growth, said his company has been monitoring the rapid rise in subscription trade for several years, "as more merchants looked for ways to deepen relationships with loyal customers, and consumers increasingly sought more convenient and flexible ways to buy from brands." Their favorite. "
Ultimately, ICONIQ is betting on its belief that ReCharge "will continue to capture significant share in a fast-growing market," he told TechCrunch.
Sull believes that the ReCharge team identified an early e-commerce subscription opportunity and addresses many of the nuanced needs of the market with a "full-featured product that uniquely enables both the smallest merchants and brands to easily adopt and scale with their platform."
Andrew Collins, managing director at Summit Partners, was impressed that the company had seen significant growth without outside capital for years, due to its "efficiency and discipline".
“The ReCharge team has identified a true fit to the product market and designed a product customers love - which has fostered strong organic growth as the business evolves,” added Collins.
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