TechCrunch March 4, 2014
Toronto-based startup Slyce has raised a new round of $10.75 million in funding, led by Beacon Securities, and including PI Financial, Salman Partners, Harrington Global and more. The company builds image recognition tech, and wants to be the Amazon Flow for every other retailer on the planet, enabling point and shoot shopping with smartphone cameras.
If you’re not familiar with Amazon Flow, it’s the app from the retailer (now integrated into its main mobile app too) that lets shoppers point their mobile device camera at products and find the Amazon listing. That’s useful for comparison shopping, and for driving purchases to Amazon’s mobile platform. The Amazon tech has some limitations, however: it requires that a product be in its original packaging to work effectively, since it leans heavily on OCR, logo identification and other visual shorthand cues.
Slyce, according to Chief Digital Officer Mark Elfenbein, doesn’t have that limitation, and can identify products wherever they are, as well as outside of packaging. That’s a considerable advantage, and one that it’s hoping will help its customers drive more purchases to their retail operations since it’s useful for ID-ing products in more settings.