Social media and AR take over beauty shopping in India

📱 The Meta numbers: Meta created a customer behavior analysis that focuses on beauty and fashion in India. The study highlights Meta platform usage, with 97% shopping there and 52% using IG Reels for purchases. Notably, 39% of these interactions resulted in actual buys.

👓️ The Virtual experience: Augmented Reality (AR) significantly influenced beauty and fashion shopping: 75% found virtual try-ons motivating for beauty, while 78% felt the same for fashion. 

Several AR shopping companies are also gaining traction in the shopping/ecommerce space.

1. 🛍️ 3DLook scans your measurements for personalized shopping experiences

2. 📸 Snapchat lets you use filters like a virtual try on

3. 💄 Lazada has a skin test AI that scans your skin to recommend beauty products.

Amazon gets a stronger robot

Meet Titan: Amazon’s new robot, Titan, is meant to bring shelves at fulfillment centers to an employee. It’s new bot can carry 2500 pounds (that’s the weight of a Toyota Prius C) and is 2x as strong as its older model.

The model uses different parts of older models including:

• Hercules’ battery and charging

• Xanthus’ vision and control

• Proteus’ hardware

Ecommerce for parents: Edamama raises $35M

🍼 $35M for moms: Edamama is a shopping platform for mothers who want to buy essentials for their babies. It recently raised Series A which was led by Ayala Corporation Innovation Venture (ACTIVE), Kickstart Ventures, Gentree Fund and Innoven Capital, GS Group.

👔 Meet the new hires: These funds will be used for expansion, Funds will be used for expansion, especially in person stores at Ayala Vertis North. Edamama also got more members to its board including:

1. Miguel Fernandez - 20 years of CFO experience at Amazon, Dell and Maya.

2. Rohan Aggarwal - former director of India’s largest ecommerce platform: Flipkart

3. Rachit Gupta - experience in growing baby and related categories at Flipkart and Snapdeal

4. Donna Manalastas - helped scale LVMH’s Benefit Cosmetics Philippines