Caligo Technologies Launches Platform to Bring Together Manufacturers and Retailers to Drive Meaningful and Profitable Customer Relationships

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 24, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Caligo Technologies, Inc., announced today the launch of the company and an initial $3 million round of financing.   This investment will deliver a solution to allow grocery retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies to create, manage and redeem promotions that dramatically increase their effectiveness and create more options to drive consumer savings.

Almost $600 billion per year is spent annually by brands to motivate consumer actions - $3.6 billion in the CPG consumer promotion market alone.  Much of this spending is wasted on inefficient distribution processes, fraud, and limited, ineffective offer options.

Retailers and CPGs have long sought to innovate new ways to work together to drive consumer actions but have been hampered by antiquated technologies that were built around the old, traditional paper coupon business.  Even with the advent of digital offers, many of the old limitations still remain as a result of the restrictive technologies and obsolete processes in place.

In today's competitive environment, CPGs and retailers need to be able to work closely together to combat increasing threats to their businesses.  They also need the flexibility to define new types of promotions and the ability to manage them with ease and efficiency, including instantaneous clearing of offers at the retailer's Point of Sale systems (POS).

The Caligo Technologies solution allows brands and retailers to work closely together to optimize the shopper experience by delivering offers that are flexible, fraud-free and friction-less.  Flexible offers open up the opportunity for brands to creatively identify new ways to motivate consumers – for example cross-brand promotions, cross-CPG promotions, high value offers and more. 

To support the expansion of the business, Caligo Technologies has raised $3M led by Storm Ventures with additional investments by Shasta Ventures, WTI, and MState.

"After starting and scaling several companies in this market and seeing first hand how technology and system limitations have hampered brands and retailers from being able to execute on their great ideas, we decided to take a fresh approach to the problem," said Robert Drescher, CEO of Caligo Technologies, Inc. "With the increasing pressure from companies dealing direct with consumers, like Amazon, we saw an urgent need for a solution that leverages the respective strengths of CPGs and retailers and allows them to work closely together in a trusted and secure environment."

The solution allows brands to create offers and build in the trust between retailers and brands to deliver those offers to consumers, have them redeemed in store, and automatically clear the transaction allowing the retailer to be paid by the brand for the discount immediately on purchase.

"Every CPG company and every grocery retailer needs to have a better way to create, manage and redeem offers so that consumers can easily discover opportunities to save and use them in-store," says Paul Willard, Partner at Storm Ventures and previously an early executive at Coupons.com. "Being from the industry, I know that CPGs and retailers always have an abundance of new ideas to drive savings for consumers, but you need to overcome the limitations that currently exist.  Caligo technologies has the team and the approach to fix this."

"The traditional coupon industry is broken. It is failing both consumer packaged goods companies and retailers of all sizes," says Rob Bailey, CEO and Founder at MState.  "Caligo intends to transform how retailers and CPGs work together so that they can build deep, meaningful and profitable relationships with customers.  This is especially critical given the competitive threat posed by Amazon.  Caligo is a team of experienced veterans building a platform with massive potential and we are honored to be investors."

The Caligo Technologies solution not only benefits retailers and CPGs, but it also opens up new offer types for consumers to discover and save more when shopping at their favorite retailer.

Caligo Technologies was founded by Robert Drescher and Frank Careccia in 2017, with a mission to create an open promotions platform that allows brands and retailers to work together and optimize the consumer experience.  Prior to Caligo Technologies, Frank and Robert successfully grew Cellfire, Inc., delivering millions of digital coupons per day to consumers for redemption at more than 22,000 stores nationwide.  Cellfire was acquired by Catalina Marketing in 2014.

About Caligo Technologies
Caligo Technologies revolutionizes digital promotion performance by pioneering breakthroughs in technologies, media and insights that build trust, deliver results and provide meaningful value to consumers around the world.

The Caligo platform allows major consumer packaged goods companies and leading retailers to work together seamlessly to deliver powerful consumer savings and build meaningful and profitable relationships. To learn more, visit www.caligotech.com.  

About Storm Ventures
Storm Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based VC firm focused on building enterprise leaders as the first or early investor. Storm's enterprise software investments include Cellfire, Marketo, Algolia, AtScale, Digital Shadows, Engagio, Guidespark, MobileIron, Pipedrive, SourceClear, Swiftstack, and Talkdesk. For more information visit: www.stormventures.com. 

About MState
MState is an investor whose goal is to take blockchain into the mainstream in the enterprise.  Backed by leading enterprise investors including Boldstart and a network of 40 Fortune 500s, MState invests in protocol, infrastructure and DApp companies. The founders have collectively helped start-ups raise more than $1B in venture and have 20 exits. For more information, visit mstate.io.

Caligo Technologies Press Contact:
[email protected]

SOURCE Caligo Technologies

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http://www.caligotech.com