Headquarters Santa Clara | Founded 2009 | |
Industry Software and technology services Key people Prashant Nedungadi - co-founder and CEO ,
Sasha Ovsankin - VP Engineering, Mary Piontkowski - VP of Products and User Experience Website | ||
IMshopping was launched in April 2009. IMshopping is a human-assisted shopping site. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States, IMshopping service is the digital equivalent of talking to a knowledgeable salesperson at a store. The site enables online shoppers to get answers to questions with reference to products and services.
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Founding
Prashant Nedungadi is the CEO and founder of IMshopping, he had previously co-founded Andale, the largest third-party tool provider on eBay. Nedungadi later merged Andale with Vendio, a small business e-commerce cvompany.
Investors
IMshopping’s primary investor is SK Telecom, a South Korean mobile telecommunications operator. The company announced that it had closed a $4.7 million Series A round of funding from SK Telecom.
Functioning and methodology
Shoppers register with the IMshopping site to ask questions with regards to the products or services they are looking for. Once the question is keyed, it is routed to Human Shopping Guides who offer their suggestions (reviews from third-party sites, blog buzz and pricing) with links to product options that fit the requirements of the user. Shoppers can use these responses to instantly make purchases or save to their own folders before making a product decision.
Additional features
The site allows online shoppers to ask questions using social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter.
The responses to the shoppers by the Human Shopping Guides are archived anonymously by the website for the reference of future shoppers. The site is user-interactive and it allows the user to answer the questions posted by others.