Aforza, who develops cloud and mobile apps for consumer products companies, announced a $ 22 million Series A round led by DN Capital.
The London-based company’s technology is powered by Salesforce and Google Cloud platforms to enable consumer goods companies to digitally transform product distribution and customer loyalty to tackle issues like unprofitable promotions and falling market share, Aforza co-founder and CEO Dominic Dinardo told ProWellTech . Using artificial intelligence, the company recommends products and can predict the order a retailer can place with promotions and prices based on factors such as locations.
That global consumer goods apps market is projected to be $ 15 billion by 2024. However, the industry is still using outdated platforms that in some cases result in a loss of 5% of sales when goods are out of stock, said Dinardo.
Aforza’s Trade Promotion Designer mobile image. Photo credits: Aforza
Dinardo and his co-founders, Ed Butterworth and Nick Eales, founded the company in 2019. All Salesforce veterans saw how underserved the consumer goods industry was in terms of the digital transition.
Aforza is Dinardo running a company for the first time. However, from his time at Salesforce, he believes that he received an education like Marc Benioff’s School of SaaS. The company added an undisclosed seed round in 2019 from Bonfire Ventures, Hence Capital, DN Capital, Next47, and Salesforce Ventures.
Then the pandemic hit, with many of the investors leaning towards it, which was a confirmation of what Aforza was doing, Dinardo said.
“Even before the pandemic, the consumer goods industry was challenged with new entrants and horrific legacy systems, but then the pandemic blocked the path to customers,” he added. “Our mission is to improve the lives of consumers by offering more sustainable products and packaging, but also to help companies be more agile and manage change when the biggest changes happen.”
DN Capital was joined by Bonfire Ventures, Hence Capital and Next47.
Brett Queener, partner at Bonfire Ventures, said he helped start Aforza with Dinardo and Eales, something his company doesn’t normally do but saw a unique opportunity to get in on the ground floor.
He also worked at Salesforce and saw the consumer goods industry as an important industry with a compelling reason for a technology shift as customers began to expect immediate availability and there were tons of emerging startups pushing into the direct-to-consumer space.
These startups don’t have a year or two to put together the kind of technology it took to scale. With Aforza, they can develop a product that works both online and offline on any device, Queener said. And instead of scheduling promotions every quarter, companies can change their ad spend in real time.
“It is time for Aforza to showcase its technology to the world, expand its presence in the US and Europe, invest more in research and development, and implement the Salesforce Playbook,” he said. “That’s what this round is about.”
Dinardo intends to use the new funds to continue research and development and double its workforce over the next six months as it builds its new US headquarters in the northeast. It already works with customers in 20 countries.
In terms of growth, Dinardo says he’s using his previous experience at startups like Veeva and Vlocity, which were acquired by Salesforce in 2020, as a benchmark for Aforza’s success.
“We have the money and the expertise – now we need to take a moment to take a deep breath, hire people with the passion and invest in new levels of products, digital assets and even payments,” he said.