Polar co-founders Charbel Seif (L) and David Dokes(R). (Credit: Photo courtesy of Polar)
Polar, a startup co-founded by Lebanese Charbel Seif and French David Dokes, specializing in data analytics for online businesses, announced it has raised $18 million in a Series A round. The round was led by Chalfen Ventures, with existing partners Point Nine and Frst also participating. This new funding brings Polar's total raised since its founding in 2021 to $28.5 million.
In its announcement, the startup, which provides a platform for analyzing sales and marketing performance for online businesses, outlined plans to use the new funding for three key goals: attracting more clients, enhancing its platform to offer even greater support, and expanding to 100 employees by the end of 2025 (up from its current 40). Currently, more than 3,700 online sellers rely on Polar’s services, allowing them to reduce customer acquisition costs by 20%
Based in Paris and New York, Polar Analytics provides online retailers with a platform that consolidates and visualizes key performance indicators from multiple sources, including online sales, site conversion rates and customer acquisition rates. This empowers businesses to analyze their data more effectively and make better-informed decisions.
Currently, Polar Analytics' services are exclusively available to retailers who have established their stores using Shopify, one of the largest content management systems in the market. Last year, Charbel Seif told L'Orient-Le Jour that the number of online stores was estimated at approximately 20 million.
He explained that “unlike other sectors, there is currently no dominant player holding a large market share. That’s the position we’re targeting. We believe we have the potential to build loyalty with over 2 million online stores out of the 20 million currently in existence.”
After two stints at Turo — a company founded by Andre Haddad, where he met David Dokes — and at Airbnb, Charbel Seif and his partner established Polar.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient Le-Jour.
