Rakuten, a Japan e-commerce and internet company, has led a $23m round of investment in US-based app developer, Slice. Slice uses the information buried in your email inbox to create fun and useful consumer applications and experiences. Slice is backed by DCM, Floodgate, Innovation Endeavors (Eric Schmidt), Lightspeed Venture Partners, NPD Group, Siguler Guff’s Russia Partners, as well as entrepreneurs Michael Birch and Rick Thompson. Launched in 2011, it also raised that year a series A round worth $9.4m.
The idea behind the Slice shopping application came out of a Stanford University research project to organise the world’s commerce data. Today, the idea has become commercialised and turned into an application that can keep track of everything you buy online, automatically organizing your purchase history and receipts, sending you push notifications when packages are en route for delivery and alerting you when you’re eligible to recoup money for items you have bought that have dropped in price.
Most recently, a personalised shopping site, TheFind, has integrated Slice into its iPad and Web apps to further personalize shoppers’ search results and enable them to track shipments right within the app. Slice has also launched a product called Slice Bookshelf, which enables users to share and discover books with friends through your inbox to automatically pull information from your past book purchases.
“Our massive growth over the past two years topped off with this round of financing validates our vision to solve consumer needs with services that go far beyond their expectations,” said Scott Brady, Slice Chief Executive Officer and co-founder in a press release. “We will continue to execute on that vision by supporting and evolving our products, growing our team and extending our APIs to partners, all with the ultimate goal of making life easier for consumers.”