American Express Acquires Nexus-backed Mezi
American Express announced today that it has acquired Mezi, the ‘AI for travel’ company based out of Silicon Valley (USA), Pune and Mumbai (India). Nexus was the sole initial institutional investor in Mezi.
Mezi is the second start-up founded by the Shinde twins whom we have known for almost a decade and have always regarded highly as exceptional product-driven entrepreneurs. After they sold their previous company, where we weren’t investors, Snehal and Swapnil reached out to us in mid 2015 to talk about their next (ad)venture. Their idea was still evolving at that time — intense brainstorming ensued leading to the birth of Mezi. The core inspiration was that mobile messaging was causing a tectonic shift in consumer behavior towards exploration and consumption of goods and services. Driven by the fundamental premise that consumers don’t buy products, they buy experiences which have to be delightful and personal, Mezi set its goal as enabling and enhancing consumer experience through AI-powered messaging — to provide faster and significantly more relevant responses. Snehal and Swapnil’s conviction resonated with ours and we were delighted to write the very first check to the company .. the Mezi journey began. No doubt there were more questions than answers at that point: should Mezi be a horizontal product or be vertical-focused? Should we go direct to consumer or partner with brands? What would be the right business model? And many more. Those did not hinder us from backing the company. Nexus team’s DNA is to be involved early on and be a thought partner for the entrepreneurs while they figure out the answers. The critical factors for us in making an investment — the inherent smarts, agility, and steadfast commitment in the founding team — were there in spades in Snehal and Swapnil. Every time we would ask them on the company status, the response was an energetic “the fight is on”! Their ability to keep their heads down, stay focused, and think independently is quite remarkable.
The initial months post funding involved a lot of agile experimentation to arrive at the product-market fit. Mezi did not wait too long to launch the product — the thinking was that the underlying technology would evolve but they would rather have market feedback sooner. The company started as a horizontal play “your shopping assistant”, but based on initial customer data they clearly saw that the primary usage pull was coming for travel-related purchases. That led Mezi to narrow its focus to become “your personal travel assistant”. Travel planning and booking decisions are among the more complex and expensive experiences that consumers grapple with. At the heart of Mezi’s solution was their AI engine that offers personalized service on each conversation, powered by a dynamic living profile of each user. Along with providing automated response through AI, Mezi’s technology would also automatically determine if and when human judgment is needed to address any particular query and seamlessly bring human expertise in the loop to provide the right experience to the user. The appropriate use of AI has allowed Mezi to address such multi-variate problems that involve higher stakes much more effectively and efficiently. Mezi’s sophisticated data science, natural language and machine learning platform processes and analyzes data from each user interaction to enrich the longitudinal user profile and improve every conversation. It’s a virtuous cycle — the more the app is used, the better the user experience gets.
Mezi app’s delightful customer experience soon started to garner unconstrained customer love and also drew attention from several established travel companies who expressed interest to partner with Mezi. Mezi launched a unique ‘travel-as-a-service’ offering, bringing traveler-centric approach to corporate travel. It did not take long for American Express to take notice. In addition to being a financial services giant, Amex is also one of the biggest travel management companies known for being ahead of the curve. They first partnered with the company as an investor and our partnership gradually evolved into a commercial partnership. Soon after, they expressed interest in acquiring the company and made a compelling offer.
Today is a bitter-sweet moment for us. While we feel that it’s just the beginning at Mezi in our pursuit to transform the travel industry and the company is all geared up for the exciting journey ahead, we also see the tremendous opportunity that the team would get in joining hands with industry leader American Express in realizing their vision. We will be cheering from the sidelines as team Mezi continues to scale greater heights as part of Amex.
It has been a terrific two and half years ride at Mezi. We are thankful to our coinvestors: Saama Capital and Amex Ventures team who joined hands with us in a subsequent financing round and have been thoughtful partners. We equally appreciate advice and camaraderie of Manish Chandra, who was the independent board member at Mezi.
It was an absolute pleasure to work with Swapnil, Snehal, Brian, Ashish, Johnny, and the entire Mezi team. We are grateful for their partnership and wish them every success in the future.
— Jishnu Bhattacharjee and Abhishek Sharma, Nexus Venture Partners
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