MIT-Founded Celect Secures $5 Million in Series A Funding
Financing, led by August Capital with participation from Activant Capital Group, will be used to expand team, open new Boston headquarters and further promote Celect's breakthrough choice modeling technology
BOSTON, June 25, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Celect, a fully data-driven customer choice modeling suite, launched today with $5 million in Series A funding led by August Capital with participation from Activant Capital Group.
The Boston-based company, founded by MIT professors Vivek Farias and Devavrat Shah, uses a fundamental technological breakthrough in machine learning, which allows retailers to truly understand their customers' buying patterns. This technology enables merchandisers, retail planners and inventory analysts to create optimized and localized product assortments, and in turn, increase inventory turnover and revenue while fostering a better customer experience. An early pilot of Celect's technology in ten stores at The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc., a regional department store, operating 270 locations across the US, shows positive increases in in-store revenue over the control group.
"Celect is fundamentally changing how some of the world's largest retailers stock their shelves," said Vivek Mehra, General Partner at August Capital who joins Celect's Board of Directors. "The underlying technology powering Celect is capable of revolutionizing the retail industry and August is thrilled to be an early supporter."
Recently crowned a Fall 2014 DEMO God winner, Celect plans to use the funding to grow its existing management and development teams and open expanded headquarters in Boston's growing Innovation District.
"Retailers are looking to leverage predictive analytics to make better informed merchandising and planning decisions," said Steve Sarracino, Founder and Partner at Activant Capital. "Celect's technology, centered around choice modeling, provides retailers with completely unique insights to help them do just that. The Celect team has deep business and technology experience and we're excited to help bring their cutting edge solution to a broader market."
"We're excited to work with investors that operate at the intersection of retail and technology," said John Andrews, CEO of Celect. "Every retailer we speak with is looking to add the support of deep science to the art of retailing, and this new funding allows us to further build out our team to assist retailers in this rapidly evolving and competitive omni-channel commerce market."
About Celect
Celect is a big data predictive analytics platform enabling merchandisers, retail planners and inventory analysts to better determine "what to put where." The Celect Optimization Platform, powered by the Celect Choice Engine, allows retailers to understand how a specific customer shopping at a specific location chooses from an assortment of products. The technology builds on a fundamental advance in customer choice modeling and machine learning called by MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory one of the 50 greatest innovations it has ever produced. Celect is founded by MIT professors Vivek Farias and Devavrat Shah and headquartered in Boston's Innovation District. For more information, visit celect.net.
SOURCE Celect
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