Seed Funds for eCommerce Optimization Firm Luca

San Francisco-based eCommerce revenue optimization firm Luca has raised $2.5m in seed funding, which it will use to scale up its data science and engineering teams, and support more retailers on its platform.

Founded last year by former Uber dynamic pricing execs Tanvi Surti and Yonah Mann, Luca generates price recommendations by absorbing retailers' sales, inventory and competitor data to forecast outcomes at different price points. Once recommendations are live, the firm monitors the price changes, watches out for abnormal patterns, and alerts the decision-maker if something is 'off'. In addition, the firm's attribution models pinpoint the effect of the pricing change and measure business impact.

Seed funding was led by Aunkur Arya from Menlo Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Uber's angel syndicate and other strategic angels. In a statement, Arya comments: 'The best investment opportunities we're pursuing right now link data science and machine learning to workflow compression inside the enterprise. The really exciting ones have a direct tie to improving enterprise gross margins. Luca is doing all of these'.

Web site: www.askluca.com .