Ecell is a backer of Mason, a start-up based in India and the US, which has built a business engine to help sellers around the world sell products online without paying exorbitant “Amazon taxes”.
The Californian startup with its R&D headquarters in Bengaluru is said to allow retailers to set up 50% higher D2C storefronts from day one. It provides a coded, plug-and-play solution that allows sellers to offer products online without the need for a large engineering team.
In the year Founded in 2020 by Barada Sahu and Kausambi Manjita, Mason claims to have more than 1,000 customers and manage more than 8,000 brands worldwide. While North America is one of the startup’s strongest markets, it also serves customers in Singapore, Southeast Asia, Japan and India.
“People are stuck with being forced to sell on Amazon. Ideally, as a brand, you want to have your own presence, but you can’t do that because it’s too difficult. It seems like a technology problem.” Manjita said in an interview with TechCrunch.
Mason product dashboard. Image Credits: Mason
While working at Walmart-owned Myntara, Sahu and Manjita decided to build their offering for online stores. While developing a custom engine for a fashion e-commerce company, the duo realized the importance of store engines to successfully run online stores that sell a variety of products. That brought Mason back to reality.
Manjita is leading Mason’s product and customer experience, while Sahu oversees revenue and growth.
The startup is aimed at small and medium businesses that sell products online but want to upgrade their stores. Although Amazon can help in such cases, Sahu and Manjita say the commission imposed by the e-commerce giant will limit the income of entrepreneurs.
Mason charges 1% of its customers’ gross sales to provide the platform. But that’s significantly less than Amazon’s 30% fee on each sale, Sahu said.
By switching to Mason, Manjita says a store can improve average order value by 23 percent within 30 days, improve lead times by 17 percent, and sell by 35 percent within 60 days.
In addition to the core commerce engine, Mason also offers a Shopify plugin called ModeMagic. “It’s designed for brands to start and basically dive deep into the Shopify ecosystem,” Sahu said.
By offering a standalone platform and Shopify plugin, the startup aims to cater to both types of entrepreneurs and businesses – those that don’t rely on a specific platform and others that use Shopify as their platform.
Mason has raised a total of $7.5 million in a seed round led by Accel and Idespring Capital, along with Lightspeed India Partners as well as Mana VC, Gyngles, Core91 and VH Capital.
“To build a truly scalable product, the team is on a journey to create a self-service platform that e-commerce brand owners can use to create, communicate and grow,” said Subrata Mitra, partner at Asil. Prepared statement.
Manjita said Mason will use the new funding to strengthen its marketing, sales, customer success and partnership teams — to bring the product to more customers. The startup plans to create better and more content to help entrepreneurs learn to solve the challenges they face in their e-commerce journey.
Mason currently has 40 people on the team, including about 30 people working on product technology and design. Most of its workforce is based out of Bengaluru, although it has early go-to-market teams in Toronto and consultants in San Diego and New York. He is leading the Customer Success, Early Marketing and Growth and Partnering teams in North America.
