Odore, a beauty tech start-up working with global brands including Guerlain, Clive Christian and L’Oréal has raised USD830,000 to transform how cosmetics and beauty businesses market their products to consumers.
Odore, a beauty tech start-up working with global brands including Guerlain, Clive Christian and L’Oréal has raised USD830,000 to transform how cosmetics and beauty businesses market their products to consumers.
The round was led by SFC Capital and joined by RLC Ventures.
Launched by university friends Armaan Mehta and Karan Gupta, Odore was originally founded to disrupt the world of beauty samples. Inspired by a cologne sample picked-up in a department store on the way to an important meeting, the pair set about transforming the clunky, old-fashioned way in which beauty brands offer sample products into a digitised, personalised and measurable part of their marketing strategies. Following a stint on the L’Oréal Beauty Tech Accelerator in 2018, Odore’s pioneering sampling technology quickly attracted attention from household name beauty brands across the world.
Following this funding round, the team are now expanding their technology offering to cover a wider range of beauty marketing needs; enabling clients to launch measurable and tailored digital marketing campaigns that can be run and measured through one centralised dashboard. The global Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry spent USD68 billion on digital marketing last year, but it’s estimated that more than half of that spend failed to see a positive return on investment (ROI).
The Odore technology will enable physical marketing such as samples and testers to be integrated alongside social media, email and paid advertising campaigns, as well as offering augmented reality integrations.
The business has seen a 401 per cent increase in revenue over the past 12 months and will use this funding round to expand their engineering team and further improve their end-to-end marketing solutions for beauty and cosmetics brands.
Armaan Mehta, Co-Founder at Odore, says: “Since launching in 2018, we’re developed fantastic relationships with beauty brands across the world, helping them re-write the rules of product sampling and bring it into the digital age. We’re now expanding the support we can provide to these businesses; enabling them to run hyper-personalised marketing campaigns that boost ROI and convert more customers, all from one dashboard.
Karan Gupta, fellow Co-Founder, adds: “The beauty market is experiencing huge growth, but customers are increasingly discerning about how and where they buy products. Our technology enables brands to respond to this with tailored, value-add marketing. We’re delighted to be welcoming this esteemed group of investors into the Odore business, allowing us to grow our product and expand our client base.”
Rohallah Ghasemi, Investment Executive at SFC Capital, says: “Armaan and Karan have already reset the agenda for beauty sampling and we’re excited to see them apply this success to a wider scope of marketing technologies. From Guerlain to L’Oréal, the calibre of brands Odore is already working with is testament to their product, their deep understanding of the CPG industry and its challenges, as well as the talents of the founding team. We’re looking forward to working closely with them as they scale.”
The marketing team at luxury perfumers Clive Christian, who use the Odore technology, says: “We’ve been extremely impressed by the Odore software and the impact it’s had on our marketing. Through it, we’ve been able to implement far more tailored strategies and have stronger oversight over customer behaviour across a range of different markets. This included digital sampling campaigns which resulted in an 85 per cent opt-in rate from prospective customers – a huge uplift on our normal projections.”
