Toronto’s Slyce Raises $11 Million from Beacon Securities and Others

Visual product search platform Slyce, today announced the close of their latest funding round with over $10.75 million raised, increasing their total funding to just over $14.5 million.

The round was lead by Beacon Securities with participation from PI Financial, Salman Partners, Harrington Global Inc., AlphaNorth Asset Management and other private investors.

The Toronto-based startup told TechCrunch that it wants to be the Amazon Flow for every other retailer on the planet. Amazon Flow is a feature of the online retailing giant’s mobile app that enables consumers to point their device cameras at products and be taken to the Amazon listing of that item.

Actually, Slyce believes it can be even better than Flow. While Amazon’s app is limited in certain ways (it requires original packaging and leans on OCR), the Toronto-based startup’s image recongition technology can identify products outside of packaging—a “considerable advantage,” according to TC.

Earlier this year Slyce acquired computer vision technology developed at York University that analyzes and aggregates similar images and also hired former York PhD student, Dr. Ehsan Fazl-Ersi, to lead the integration of the intellectual property into Slyce’s Visual Search Platform.

“Visual search is experiencing explosive growth and has become a compelling way for retailers to engage their customers,”  Adam Jarczyn, Slyce’s chief product officer, said at the time. “York’s technology provides us with another competitive edge in ensuring a high-quality consumer shopping experience.”

Slyce is participating in the inaugural Toronto Tech Fest hosted by Techvibes later this month.