Venture Capital News: Drync Swallows $900K
2013-08-14
BOSTON, MA, Wine app developer, today launched its full-featured wine discovery and e-commerce mobile app and announced that is has secured $900k to expand fulfillment and marketing.
Drync, a top wine app developer, today launched its full-featured wine discovery and e-commerce mobile app that allows users to buy nearly any wine instantly by snapping a photo of the label. Likened to 'Shazam for Wine,' Drync users can learn about, track, share, and buy their wine in seconds using an iOS mobile device. Emerging from beta, Drync now has a network of fulfillment partners with over 30,000 wines available for sale to consumers in 41 states.
Drync also announced that is has secured $900k to expand fulfillment and marketing, and further develop the product. Investments come from angel investors, including Mark Hastings, managing partner of Garvin Hill Capital Fund, financial industry executive Jack Remondi and Andrew Moss, founder of BuyWithMe.
'The Drync team has developed an elegant solution to an age-old problem for wine drinkers: 'I love this wine. Now, where can I get it?'' said lead investor Mark Hastings. 'Drync is the only product on the market that bridges the gap between trying a wine you love, remembering it, and buying it again. Drync has the potential to completely change how people discover and buy wine.'
According to Wine Intelligence, the U.S wine market is poised to reach over $34 billion in sales, with over 100 million wine drinkers. In a survey released by Drync, 94 percent of respondents cited the issue of trying a wine, but being unable to remember the name or find it at the store. Today, most retailers stock approximately 1,000-2,000 wines, representing less than two percent of the wines available in a given market, which makes the hunt for a specific wine particularly challenging.
Drync's professionally curated wine lists help people discover new wines, featuring recommendations from top wine experts, such as Charles Antin, wine specialist and auctioneer at Christie's NY, as well as hand-crafted lists of rare and unique wines in topical categories recommended by wine professionals.
'The wine industry is a very large market that has not enjoyed the explosive growth that other sectors have from technology innovation, but this is about to change,' said Brad Rosen, CEO, Drync.
The free app, available today for iOS and coming soon for Android, also offers:
Instant identification of over 1.7M wines
Highly accurate image recognition technology that works on wine bottle labels, as well as wine labels in magazines, billboards and on computer screens
Text search capability to find wines by name
Secure, instant in-app checkout
Sharing wine activity with friends on Facebook and Twitter
Detailed wine information, including collaborative ratings and wine descriptions
Personal wine ratings and tasting notes that can be shared publicly, or kept private
Ability to submit unmatched labels for human curation
Soon to come -- personalized and social recommendations
About Drync
Drync is the first mobile app that allows consumers to find, track, share, and purchase wine at the moment it is most relevant to them -- while they are drinking it. The elegant and intuitive iOS mobile app allows consumers to quickly and easily purchase the wines they love on their mobile phones for home delivery. For more information, visit: http://www.drync.com.
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