Livebuy gets new funding as video shopping grows fast

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Dec 17, 2021

As ‘live’ shopping continues to grow, a German start-up has raised €4.9 million in seed funding to help it exploit the opportunities in the segment in Europe.

Berlin-based Livebuy creates live shopping experiences and was founded only last year with an aim to bring teleshopping into the smartphone age. Its tagline is “live shopping made easy”.

It enables retailers and brands to easily operate their own live video shopping platforms and integrate them into their existing online shopping operations.

The new funding came in a round led by RTP Global with other investors also taking part.

The money will be used to improve its proprietary software, expand its offer and grow across Europe. 

Live shopping has been seen growing take-up in Europe but remains much bigger in markets such as Asia and the US.

The potential is huge with livestream shopping in Asia already being a billion-dollar market. There are 150+ live shopping platforms in the region and a recent McKinsey report said China’s live-commerce market grew at a compound annual growth rate of more than 280% between 2017 and 2020. Chinese sales alone are expected to reach $423 billion by 2022.

The company said clients so far have included retailers such as Douglas, KaDeWe, Lidl and MediaMarktSaturn.

CEO and co-founder Alex von Harsdorf said: “It’s been an incredible first year as we gained strong momentum from the get-go. For the next stage we aim to put creators on the centre stage of shoppable live streams as we believe that whoever wins the hearts of the best live video shopping creators, will win this market.”