Nectar Secures $4.55M in Seed Funding to Bring First Automated Replenishment Platform to the Consumer Packaged Goods and Alcohol Beverage Markets

December 12, 2016 — Today, Nectar announced $4.55 million in seed funding from a group of investors including Palantir co-founder and venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, former Flextronics executive Lior Susan, and the founding family of Modelo Group. The company, still in stealth mode, is building a connected device solution for the trillion-dollar consumer packaged goods (CPG) and alcoholic beverage industries.
 
While consumers are expected to spend $417 billion on consumer packaged goods in 2018, CPG companies still suffer from an enormous and value-destructive information gap: they have zero idea about how their products are used. For instance, brands are currently unable to monitor frequency of purchase or consumption of their products, and have no insight into competitor metrics. Nectar will provide these long-awaited insights, arming both CPG and retail businesses with a suite of insights never available before.
 
For the alcoholic beverage industry, Nectar’s platform brings value to the entire value chain - restaurants, brands, distributors and consumers. Consider the lost revenue crisis - an enormous problem, as studies show that the bar industry loses more than $10 billion each year due to free drinks, over-pouring, and other exceptions. Nectar will provide critical real-time data on inventory and power auto-reordering to improve bar efficiency, save time and maximize the bottom line.
 
“The trillion dollar consumer packaged goods and alcohol beverage industry hasn’t experienced much technological disruption - Nectar is the first solution to manage consumption and automatic replenishment,“ said Joe Lonsdale, founding partner at 8VC. ”Nectar is positioned to bring the analog world of product consumption into a digital mindset"
 
Founded by experts in consumer products and digital platforms, Aayush Phumbhra and Prabhanjan “PJ” Gurumohan bring more than 20 years of experience to Nectar. Phumbhra previously co-founded Chegg, the innovative solution to expensive textbook purchases, raised $500+ million, and evolved the company from a boot-strapped startup to a multi-million dollar publicly traded digital learning platform (NYSE: CHGG). Gurumohan was the co-founder and CEO of Genwi, one of the largest cloud publishing solutions that’s helped more than 1,500 customers like Condé Nast, Forbes, and PBS.  
 
“The principles on which we founded Nectar are simple: manually tracking inventory is about as sensible as keeping your restaurant reservations in a ledger” said Aayush Phumbhra, Nectar co-founder and CEO. “By solving tedious and manual tasks, we enable brands to focus on what really matters — customer experience and profits.”
 
Nectar’s first product will launch for the hospitality industry in 2017.
 
About Nectar
Nectar solves a gaping information gap within the trillion-dollar consumer packaged goods and alcoholic beverage industries, with a new generation of connected devices that powers automatic replenishment and data-driven insights, thus making deeper customer engagement possible.
 
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Palo Alto, Nectar is backed by leading investors in software, hardware and digital platforms such as Palantir co-founder and venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, former Flextronics executive Lior Susan, founding family of the Modelo Group, restaurateur Ari Ojalvo, co-founder of KNR hospitality group Karim Masri, co-founder of GoSpotCheck Samantha Holloway, managing partner at Soma Capital Aneel Ranadive, venture capitalists Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, founder of Streamlined Ventures Ullas Naik, CEO of Chegg and former COO of Yahoo! Dan Rosenweig, founder of Radius, Darien Shirazi, and founder and general partner at Level Ventures Albert Azout.  
 
To learn more, visit getnectar.com.
 

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Molly O’Connor

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