E-commerce technology startup Keeyu has raised $2.3 million in a pre-seed round ahead of publicly launching its proactive AI Agent that is helping a raft of major retailers tackle the chaos of the year’s looming peak trading periods of Black Friday and Christmas.
The capital raise was led by Rampersand, with participation from Archangel, Startmate, Empress Capital, Exhort Ventures, Sydney Angels and Southern Angels following a solid early take-up of the Keeyu platform through the beta testing phase.
Since launching in July 2024, Keeyu’s AI Agent has been adopted by 15 retailers across 25 brands, including Decjuba, Rebel Sport NZ, Camilla, EHP Labs, Clutch Glue and Budgy Smuggler.
The Keeyu platform monitors the entire e-commerce order journey, from payment and fulfilment to delivery and returns, with the goal of preventing issues before customers complain.
Built by retailers for retailers, Keeyu says its platform detects problems in real time so teams can act before these problems become costly service issues.
Keeyu was founded by Jevon Le Roux, Tahir Rauf and Tracy Godtschalk who come from retail and tech backgrounds working with the likes of P.E Nation, Sportscraft, SurfStitch and Mastercard.
The founders say they experienced firsthand how disconnected systems, delayed insights and reactive customer service were holding retail teams back, so they set out to create a new category of proactive e-commerce operations to fix the problem at its source.
Le Roux, the Keeyu CEO, says retailers have been stuck in reactive mode for years, waiting for customers to complain before fixing problems.
“We built Keeyu to change that, so shoppers get what they want, on time, as promised,” he says
The $2.3 million capital raise came on the heels of strong traction and market demand for the Keeyu platform which will apply the new funds to accelerate its growth plans.
The funding round was also supported by prominent angels Jason Wyatt (Marketplacer), Alexey Mitko (Eucalyptus), Paul Greenberg (DealsDirect and early advisor to Afterpay) and Luigi Iacullo (an early Canva investor).
Blackbird-backed Clutch Glue founder and CEO Annabel Hay says that Keeyu is solving a “huge problem” for the e-commerce sector.
“Keeyu is an absolute game-changer for FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) businesses,” says Hay.
“It identifies issues before customers even notice them, allowing us to stay ahead and deliver the best possible service.
“In just one snapshot, it can uncover insights that would normally take multiple full-time team members an entire day to produce.
“It’s become a critical part of our operations, solving a real challenge that businesses of all sizes, whether small, rapidly scaling or well-established, have been facing.”
Keeyu says that during the 2024 holiday season, Australia Post delivered more than 103 million parcels and many brands struggled to keep up.
Late deliveries and stockouts went viral on social media, eroding customer trust at a time when retailers try to build brand loyalty.
The company says what should be a golden opportunity to boost revenue often results in lost sales, churn and overwhelmed service teams.
It also notes that industry studies show that nearly half of customers don’t return after a poor delivery experience.
Co-founder and chief product officer Tracy Godtschalk says Keeyu’s vision is to make proactive operations the new standard in retail.
“Teams shouldn’t be chasing tickets,” she says. “They should have the silence that comes when everything works.”
Keeyu says retailers using its platform report up to 90 per cent fewer WISMO (where is my order) tickets, a 50 per cent reduction in manual workload across the customer experience and operations teams, and a 9 per cent lift in customer retention, which it says delivers between 10x and 20x return on investment during peak trading periods.
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