Dutch AI startup Convious raises €3.6M, opens R&D centre in Vilnius, Lithuania

The Dutch AI tech startup, Convious that has expertise providing data-driven customised e-commerce solutions, has just announced opening its R&D center in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Convious raised €3.6 million funding

As per the latest press release, the company has also raised more than €3.6 million from existing investors Capital Mills and others to build a team for developing a platform that will employ AI to provide users shopping online with personalized price offers.

Furthermore, Convious is currently on the look for software engineers and data scientists and expects it’s the team to be 30 strong by the end of 2018.

According to Camiel Kraan, CEO, and co-founder of Convious, the company is seeking professionals of the highest caliber that are well-versed in Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and, of course, coding.

“Our line of work is on the intersection of several fields – Artificial Intelligence, data analysis, IT, e-commerce and marketing, to name just a few. To excel we need exceptionally talented people with a good track record and willingness to learn and improvise,” said Camiel Kraan. “When we say that we choose people over process, we mean it. This translates not only into competitive salaries and financial and non-financial incentives but also something rarely found on the job market – unlimited paid vacation time.”

Camiel Kraan has 20 years of experience in sales and operations and he also founded kids learning platform Squla (exit to RTL Ventures in 2014). Further, he also sold his last startup to online gaming mogul bwinparty.

AI is the future

Convious is quite an inventive startup that uses AI to deliver a personalised online booking and buying experience for visitors. Hyper-personalization and Data-Driven automation are the main pillars of the Convious platform. The company is convinced that mass discounting is a thing of the past and soon more and more business areas will start using AI to offer dynamic pricing directly to customers. This eliminates the heavy dependence on intermediaries and affiliates, while at the same time boosting sales. The platform has already been put to the test by multiple companies in Europe and the US with impressive results.

“We have seen that dated marketing practices that use a generalist approach fail to create value in what we like to call “the new economy”, which is data-driven and consumer-led. Our first customers have seen an increase from 30 to 100% by switching to a dynamic process model,” Camiel Kraan adds.

Why Lithuania?

According to Mantas Katinas, Managing Director at Invest Lithuania, the company’s decision to perform R&D in Lithuania is significant of the potential the country has in developing solutions for the Internet of tomorrow.

“Skilled developers with both excellent technical knowledge and a solid portfolio of soft skills are not that easy to come across in Western Europe, where a lack of such specialists causes a headache for many businesses. With a steady pipeline of IT graduates and a booming tech scene, Lithuania has what it takes to attract disruptive companies from around the world,” Mantas Katinas believes.

“In recent time, Lithuania is undergoing a qualitative leap in the tech sphere by attracting global companies that rely on our specialists for tasks that require extremely high competencies,” states Virginijus Sinkevičius, Lithuanian Minister of Economy. “Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Science that Convious employs in their line of work are the fields of the future. The fact that even more Lithuanian IT specialists will work in these fields means that our labour market is moving in the right direction for an innovation-based economy.”

Convious was established in the Netherlands in 2016. The company aims to help the leisure and hospitality industry around the world increase their shopping cart sales via personalised pricing solutions delivered via an AI-driven platform. In June 2018, the start-up won in the Heavyweight category at the global Get in the Ring event in Cascais, Portugal.

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