[Funding alert] Avataar raises $45M in Series B from Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital India

San Francisco and Bengaluru-based Avataar.me, an AI and Computer Vision platform focused on spatial visual discovery, on Friday announced a $45 million Series B funding round led by Tiger Global with co-participation from existing investor Sequoia Capital India. 

In a media statement, the company said the funding is primarily for growth capital. Of the total, 70 percent goes will be used towards technology innovation (product, engineering and research), while 30 percent to expand the platform's global footprint. The company says it currently predominantly services the US market and is working with enterprise leaders across commerce categories).

This financing brings the total funds raised by the firm to about $55.5 million across all funding rounds.

“Consumers continue to look for a better ecommerce experience, and the innovative  technology created by Avataar provides a powerful plug and play solution for its customers to meet this demand. As the digital world shifts from 2D to 3D, Avataar and its  talented management team are well positioned in this fast-growing market,” said Evan Feinberg, Partner at Tiger Global. 

Founded by Prashanth Aluru, Sravanth Aluru, Gaurav Baid and Mayank Tiwari in 2014, Avataar’s platform powers the global e-commerce marketplaces and D2C brands. The company helps consumers by providing life-sized 3D product evaluation coupled with interactive feature discovery. Avataar says that its platform offers plug and play integration into the websites and mobile apps of its client partners.  

Avataar’s proprietary platform acts as an ‘Inside Engine’ powering multiple user experience  shifts to interactive life-size Web 3.0, also known as the Metaverse.  

For example, the platform enables a consumer looking to purchase a refrigerator to drop a  virtual version in their own kitchen and walk around to evaluate the look and feel in true life-size. The consumer is able to toggle between available colors, open and close the doors,  and easily compare multiple refrigerator types side-by-side. Additionally, deep behavioral insights and consumer analytics are leveraged by e-commerce marketplaces that use Avataar’s platform to achieve more than 3.5x sales conversion uplift along with a significant increase in consumer average engagement time, the company said in a statement. 

Sravanth Aluru, Founder and  CEO, Avataar commented,

“More than 60 percent of human sensory neural processing is visual in nature, and the lack  of spatial depth on flat screens today drives a big experience gap between the digital (static  2D images and videos) and the physical world experiences. The digital world is undergoing a  fundamental shift from static 2D content to a life-size virtual 3D world which is dynamic and super imposable onto our shared physical reality. Avataar aims to be the ‘Inside Engine’ powering many new consumer journeys in this shift.”

Avataar’s backend SuperNova platform seamlessly ingests existing 2D product images/videos across categories like furniture, electronics, large appliances, fashion, and more, and offers a plug and play front-end integration for consumer visualization of life-size 3D avataars of products at scale. As per the firm, the digital and digitally influenced marketplace is projected to grow to $18 trillion by 2025, offering a monetization opportunity of more than  $50 billion over the next decade for the underlying platforms driving the 2D to 3D  commerce shift. 

"The Metaverse is already here, just not evenly distributed. Avataar.me is leading the way in  bringing scale creation capabilities to the largest brands to enable commerce - an  application with tremendous promise in AR/VR environments," said Shailesh Lakhani, MD at Sequoia India.