E-commerce is a sweet market
Ecommerce, and thus the number of online stores, is a rapidly growing market. In 2015, it was estimated that there were 650,000 e-commerce sites producing meaningful revenue. There has been approximately 20% growth in e-commerce year-over-year in the past few years. Playing with these numbers, it’s not quite bold to assume that there are approximately 780,000 online shops of a meaningful size. And the Czech startup MonkeyData will be going after them to convert into adepts of its analytics platform to become a global leader in this niche.
Being e-commerce entrepreneurs themselves, the founders Jan Lastuvka, Tomas Turon and Lubos Malik knew that there was a gap in the marketplace and that analytics could be done better. They dreamt up a solution to the current problems and built MonkeyData, a SaaS analytics platform for small and medium online stores. In the Czech city of Ostrava 12 developers work on the software that already serves over 3,500 customers globally.
Funding and plans
One of the biggest milestones so far is raising the seed round from Solotron Investment, Prague-based VC fund with a focus on CEE. The round was split in two parts, and the most recent tranche of $500K was committed in September 2016. “In Q3-Q4 next year, we are planning on opening a series A round for global investors”, said Jan Lastuvka, the CEO of MonkeyData.
Customers give positive feedback to the product, and it gained good traction in app stores and through partnerships with online store SaaS platforms. The team is planning to further expand the business through partnerships with online store platforms such as Shopify and BigCommerce. In the near future, they will put a larger focus on the US e-commerce market and open a new office in Austin, Texas. The HQ and software development center is in Ostrava, Czech Republic.
MonkeyData wages competition war with unique features
“We focus on small and medium businesses who are looking to make the most out of their data while reducing the time spent on analysis and reporting. MonkeyData has a flexible pricing model which allows customers to adjust their plan to include the features that they need,” said Jan Lastuvka, the CEO, in an interview with GoalEurope.
MonkeyData offers features that are unique to both other e-commerce analytics applications and the built-in analytics that comes with online store platforms. Most importantly, they analyze all online data sources in one place, and users don’t have to switch between your Google Analytics, Facebook and email campaign dashboards. It saves a lot of time for analysis and reporting.
Another time-saver that most other analytics systems don’t provide is one-click integrations with all data sources, while MonkeyData automatically downloads relevant data. Also, online store owners can see predictions and compare performance across different periods, which helps them adjust staffing and ad campaigns. The team is listening to users’ feedback and implementing new features.
