Our investment in MishiPay

September 24th, 2019

We are happy to announce our participation in MishiPay Series A funding round of £3.5 million, together with American Express Ventures and Nauta Capital.

MishiPay is a mobile self-checkout solution that brings the best of the online checkout experience to physical retail stores. Its technology allows in-store shoppers to pick up a product, scan the barcode and pay with their phone, and simply walk out of the shop with their purchase. Simple, isn’t it?

The idea of MishiPay originated when Mustafa Khanwala, CEO and founder, waited in a queue at a supermarket for 20 minutes to buy a single can of soda. Frustrated by the shopping experience, he started to imagine a better way to do this, for both stores and their customers. This episode dates back to 2015 – since then, Mustafa and his London/Bangalore-based team achieved great results and now MishiPay serves its scan, pay, leave technology to some of the largest retailers in the world, such as Decathlon and MediaMarktSaturn. The vision of Mustafa and his cofounder Tanvi Bhardwaj (both named on the prestigious 2019 Forbes list “30 under 30”) for MishiPay is clear: “to become the payment method that customers expect in store”.

Traditional retail is getting an upgrade: brick and mortar stores have understood that, if they want to keep up with online retail and survive the so-called retail apocalypse, they need to embrace the change. The digital transformation is playing a crucial role in the sector and only the organizations able to reimagine themselves through the application of innovative technologies will overcome the challenge and turn issues into opportunities.

Among the many emerging tech trends that are disrupting the retail sector (just to name a few: AI-powered product recommendations, technology-driven inventory management, blockchain for supply chains, autonomous delivery, augmented & virtual reality, facial recognition, voice shopping via smart speakers…) automated checkout and cashier-less technology dominate the conversation. It’s not all about Amazon Go and Hema by Alibaba: many companies around the world are working to evolve the checkout process using technologies such as machine vision, IoT, and RFID. 

Scan & go technology offers multiple advantages both to retailers and customers. Major benefit is the increase in sales and store profitability: did you know that any large retailer suffers revenue loss due to abandoned baskets by the clients not willing to spend time in queue at checkout? Analysts estimate on average 5 abandoned baskets (of €40 each) per store per day, resulting on an average revenue loss per day of €200 – now multiply that number for each day of the year and for hundreds of stores around the globe…  

The technology also allows to collect precious shopper insights and get a deeper understanding of customers’ behaviour. As a consequence, shoppers get an enhanced shopping experience, tailored to their needs. At the same time the store personnel, freed from the tills, has the possibility to follow the customers along the shopping journey and focus on other areas of the business.

A collateral aspect that scan & go technology solves is that of unnecessary paper receipts: Green America’s 2019 ‘Skip the Slip’ report found that in the US, the number of receipts produced results in 3 million trees being cut down, 9 billion gallons of water used, 302 million pounds of solid waste created and 4 billion pounds of greenhouse gases emitted.

In this competitive and exciting scenario worth over $50bn worldwide, we have been impressed by Mustafa and the team at MishiPay, as they have been able to develop a platform that integrates quickly and cost-effectively into retailers’ existing systems without the need for any additional hardware, and is well positioned to play a key role in the self-checkout retail evolution. We are thrilled to be part of this investment round and looking forward to support MishiPay to scale across Europe and into the US, on a mission to shape the future of shopping.

You can read the press release here: https://mishipay.com/blogs/mishipay-raises-3-5m-series-a/

UV2’s investment in MishiPay is also supported by the European Investment Fund through InnovFin Equity, with financial backing from the European Union under the financial instruments of Horizon 2020 and the European Fund for Strategic Investments (“EFSI”) established under the Investment Plan for Europe. The purpose of EFSI is to support the financing and implementation of productive investments in the European Union and ensure greater access to finance.

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