Tapcart Raises $50M Series B - Shopify Mobile App Platform

The Rise of Mobile Commerce and Tapcart's $50 Million Funding

Shopify revolutionized e-commerce by simplifying website creation for merchants. Now, Tapcart is achieving a similar transformation within the realm of mobile commerce.

The company, often described as the “Shopify for mobile apps,” currently supports the shopping applications of prominent brands like Fashion Nova, Pier One Imports, The Hundreds, Patta, Culture Kings, and numerous others. Driven by substantial growth – a 3x increase in revenue, partially fueled by the pandemic – Tapcart has secured $50 million in Series B funding, spearheaded by Left Lane Capital.

Investment Details and Key Players

This funding round saw participation from several investors, including SignalFire, Greycroft, Act One Ventures, and Amplify LA. Notably, Shopify itself is among the investors, recognizing the potential of Tapcart’s traction within its own merchant network.

Tapcart’s founders, Sina Mobasser and Eric Netsch, bring extensive experience in the mobile app industry. Mobasser previously founded TestMax, an early iOS test preparation platform, while Netsch specialized in creating mobile and digital experiences for brands through his agency work.

Rapid App Development and Cost-Effectiveness

“Our platform enables app launch within weeks, a process that historically required up to a year for custom development,” explains Mobasser. “This is achievable with a predictable, low monthly fee.”

Tapcart’s platform features a user-friendly drag-and-drop builder. This allows businesses to easily create mobile apps for their existing Shopify stores. Tools are provided for layout design, product detail page customization, checkout integration, review inclusion, and the addition of branded content like blogs and videos.

Real-time synchronization with Shopify ensures that inventory, products, and collections are consistently updated within the app. This differs from competitors who often require separate data management.

Focus on Brand Differentiation

Tapcart leverages Shopify’s APIs and SDKs to build native applications compatible with existing data structures. This allows the company to concentrate on the 10% of elements that distinguish brands, such as branding, content, and design.

The platform’s CMS empowers merchants to create exclusive content, modify colors and fonts, incorporate videos, and fully customize the app’s appearance and feel.

Automated Marketing and Push Notifications

Beyond app creation, Tapcart facilitates marketing automation. Merchants can engage customers in real-time through push notifications, promoting sales, recovering abandoned carts, and announcing promotions. These campaigns can be scheduled in advance.

The company reports that these push notifications achieve click-through rates 72% higher than traditional email or SMS, due to their interactive nature and branding opportunities.

Targeting the Right Customers

The platform is gaining traction with small to medium-sized businesses and mid-market enterprises. These companies are at a stage where prioritizing customer retention, conversion optimization, and streamlining their mobile workflow is crucial.

“We find our ideal customers have around a couple hundred existing customers,” notes Netsch. “This is the optimal time to shift focus from acquiring new customers to retaining and engaging those already in your database, encouraging repeat purchases and enhancing their overall experience.”

Impressive Growth Metrics

Over the past year, Tapcart’s platform processed over $1.2 billion in merchant sales. In 2020, recurring revenue tripled, coinciding with increased mobile screen time (up 20% year-over-year from 2019) and a 55% surge in mobile commerce spending, exceeding $53 billion globally during the holiday season.

Tapcart’s merchants experienced mobile app orders at a rate exceeding one per second during this period, and the company anticipates these trends will persist.

Revenue Model and Future Plans

Tapcart operates on a flat SaaS (software-as-a-service) fee structure, differentiating it from competitors who charge a percentage of merchant sales.

The new funding will be directed towards developing a comprehensive mobile commerce suite, including support for iOS App Clips. An upgraded analytics platform and scripts for comparing website and app performance are also planned.

Later this year, Tapcart intends to launch a full marketing automation product, enabling brands to personalize and automate notifications further. Expansion into global markets is also a priority.

The funding will facilitate the hiring of an additional 200 employees over the next 24 months, bringing the total headcount to 270. This expansion will include personnel across multiple time zones and in regions like Australia and Europe.

Synergy with Shopify

Shopify’s investment will foster collaboration in product development, engineering, business strategy, and partnerships. It will also increase Tapcart’s visibility among Shopify’s 1.7 million merchants.

“Many merchants still require improved mobile experiences but haven’t fully committed to mobile app development,” notes Netsch. “We aim to provide a single platform encompassing the best mobile growth strategies, and there’s significant potential for Tapcart to expand within the existing market.”

“We believe brands must be where their customers are, and today that means being on their phones,” stated Satish Kanwar, VP of product acceleration at Shopify. “Tapcart helps merchants create mobile-first shopping experiences that customers love, reinforcing Shopify’s mission to make commerce better for everyone. We look forward to seeing Tapcart expand its success on Shopify with the more than 1.7 million merchants on our platform today.”