Magicpin deepens its foray into small retailers with Vera AI assistant

Magicpin invests $1M in AI-powered Vera to help small retailers boost visibility, automate marketing, and drive sales with real-time insights and digital tools

Magicpin is betting on artificial intelligence (AI) to deepen its play among small retailers, investing $1 million to build an in-house AI stack that it believes can help merchants digitise operations, improve online discoverability, and drive sales.

 

According to the company, Vera acts as an AI co-pilot for merchants, enabling them to set up and manage their online presence end-to-end, while also replacing the need for multiple marketing tools.

 

Anshoo Sharma, chief executive officer and co-founder at Magicpin, said, “Magicpin’s mission has always been to bring small neighbourhood retailers online at scale. With Vera, we are going a step further, helping them compete and grow using AI. Vera acts as a growth engine that not only manages a merchant’s digital presence but also drives real business outcomes.”

 

Sharma added that the AI-led merchant enablement will unlock a significant new revenue stream for the company, contributing meaningfully to its SaaS and advertising business over the next 2–3 years. The platform estimates this to be a multi-billion dollar opportunity over the next 5–7 years, as local retailers shift from manual marketing and agencies to automated, performance-led platforms.

 

This is evident from the early impact that the offering has had on small businesses. Sharma added that the early results indicate a 1.5–2 times rise in visibility for small retailers, in addition to up to a three-times increase in customer actions and a meaningful jump in conversion to paying customers. Ahead of the official launch, Magicpin conducted a pre-launch trial with over 100,000 retailers who now manage their store marketing and online presence via Vera.

 

The platform, in all, currently enables over 275,000 neighbourhood merchants to digitise and grow their businesses.

 

“It actively manages a business’s online presence by optimising Google listings, auto-responding to 100 per cent of reviews, enhancing content, and boosting visibility across both traditional and AI-led search platforms such as ChatGPT,” the company added.

 

Operating similarly to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, Vera also converts customer queries into high-intent leads and bookings in real time.

 

Although the company planned to mark the official launch around Diwali this year, the timing was moved forward due to a severe LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) crisis affecting food delivery partners across India. In this situation, Magicpin provided real-time, AI-enabled support via Vera, giving retailers volume insights so that restaurants can prepare accordingly and plan operations judiciously.

 

Magicpin offered free access to Vera during the trial phase; however, the platform now offers two paid subscriptions, costing Rs 499 and Rs 4,999 each.

 

In FY24, the company reported a threefold jump in its revenue, reaching Rs 870 crore, up from Rs 297 crore in the previous fiscal year. The growth was accompanied by a sharp 30 per cent year-on-year reduction in cash burn. Overall, the platform itself has also begun deploying AI across 40 per cent of its core business functions.