AI-powered Daash Intelligence secures 5.5 million US dollars

American start-up Daash Intelligence, an AI-powered predictive commerce insights platform for retail brands has secured 5.5 million US dollars in its second seed funding round.

The new funding was led by new investor Bullpen Capital, with participation from GFT Ventures, as well as from returning investors Silicon Road Ventures and Red Bike Capital, bringing Daash’s total funding to date to 8.25 million US dollars.

Daash said it will use the new funding to “rapidly scale” its engineering and go-to-market teams and accelerate product development to meet the high demand for timely, actionable data insights that enable beauty brands of all sizes to spot and leverage white space market opportunities.

Philip Smolin, co-founder and chief executive of Daash Intelligence, said in a statement: “Beauty is a fiercely competitive retail category and beauty and personal care brands need affordable data insights that help them understand market trends as they are occurring, not weeks or months later.

“We’re extremely pleased to partner with this prestigious group of investors to provide beauty brands with a powerful early indication of where their market opportunities lie, so they can act quickly to take advantage of emerging trends and maximise their sales.”

The Daash platform aims to help brands develop competitive retail strategies, using proprietary AI-powered technology to offer actionable insights into competitive products, sales performance and market share information.

The platform provides weekly retailer-specific updates for colour cosmetics, skincare, fragrance, haircare, personal care and other brands seeking to understand how they are performing compared to their full set of competitors to enable brands to make better data-driven decisions and optimise performance.

Paul Martino, general partner at Bullpen Capital, added: “Daash has seen phenomenal growth momentum since its launch and has more than doubled its client roster since announcing its initial funding round just over a year ago.

“The experienced team of co-founders identified a void in the commerce intelligence space and moved quickly to fill it, using AI to unlock the predictive insights midsized and smaller brands need to compete with even the biggest beauty behemoths.”

Amika, Glow Recipe, Ilia and Tatcha are among the leading brands using Daash to inform new product development and optimise marketing, distribution and sales strategies.