Zycada emerges from stealth with $19M in funding to deliver fastest online shopping experience

According to industry forecast, the e-commerce market will expand rapidly in the coming years, especially as public health concerns radically reshape consumer behavior and further accelerate the transition from brick and mortar stores to online shopping. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, online sales were forecast to grow from $3.5 trillion in 2018 to $7 trillion in 2024.

Today, there are 12-24 million online retailers globally, with many of these online retailers lacking the infrastructure and resources to deliver e-commerce sessions that are as quick and reliable as Amazon’s. Even large e-retailers struggle to match Amazon’s speed and market dominance. TTI is a critical metric for gauging e-commerce performance, measuring how long it takes for the interactive elements of a page (such as a “buy now” button) to load.

Zycada is a San Jose, California-based tech startup that shatters the status quo with a platform that pushes TTI below 500 milliseconds, significantly outpacing Amazon. By leveraging Zycada’s innovative new approach, online retailers gain substantial improvements in conversion rate, revenue per session and total revenue uplift. Moreover, Zycada is simple to use and works right out the box, enabling organizations to quickly transform their online shopping portals.

Today, Zycada announced its launch from stealth with $19 million in funding to enable the fastest digital shopping experience by leveraging the power and scale of botnet technology. The round was led by Kholsa Ventures, with participation from Cervin Venturers and Nordic Eye Venture Capital. Zycada plans to used the new funding to accelerate product development further and expand the go-to market efforts.

In conjunction with the funding, Zycada also announced that industry leader Preetish Nijhawan, Managing Partner at Cervin Ventures and co-Founder of Akamai Technologies, has joined its Board of Directors. Zycada also has appointed James Brear as President & CEO. Before joining Zycada as CEO, Brear was President & CEO of Veriflow, which was sold to VMWare in August 2019.

Founded in 2016 by Roy Antonyraj and Subbu Varadarajan, Zycada empowers the fastest online shopping experience by leveraging the power and scale of bot technology. Zycada bots anticipate user interactions, working ahead of them as a personal concierge – dramatically enhancing the shopper’s experience and increasing online retail revenues. Zycada is backed by Khosla Ventures, Cervin Ventures and Nordic Eye Venture Capital.

Today’s online shoppers have high expectations of performance and personalization, placing the burden of speed directly on the eCommerce brand. But, the brand doesn’t control the network path. Using Zycada, retailers compute and deliver dynamic content more quickly, and adapt to changing network conditions in real-time to maintain a heightened Quality of Experience. Bots are the secret, acting on behalf of the application to compute the right content at the right time, before the user requests it.

“The e-commerce market has been growing exponentially for decades. The current pandemic will permanently alter consumer behavior in a way that will only hasten that growth. However, for the vast majority of e-retailers to capture more of this burgeoning market, they need to overcome massive speed and performance limitations,” said James Brear, CEO, Zycada. “Zycada has introduced an innovative approach that eliminates these bottlenecks by employing the scale and power of bot technology in a way that’s never been done. As a result, we’re not just leveling the playing field between e-retailers and Amazon – we’re helping them rise above Amazon.”