InstaCarro, a digital marketplace that connects used car sellers to dealers in Brazil, has raised $23 million in a Series B round of funding. Until this year, the startup operated only in São Paulo. In the first half of this year, it launched operations in eight new cities, and is now also live in Campinas, Curitiba, Joinville, Santos, Brasília, Goiânia, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte.
In this very different time, retailers are trying to do whatever they can to survive as more shoppers move to the online world to purchase products and services. While having an online channel is necessary for today’s retailers, many transactions still happen in their physical stores. Hence, retailers must leverage their data collected from both the online and offline worlds. The retailers that successfully do so will stay relevant in this era, as they can seamlessly provide an omnichannel retail experience to their customers.
The distribution of the marketing budget is changing due to digital acceleration, according to industry analysis firm IDC. In Latin America, that means a change of priorities for Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs). Sixty-four percent of the CMOs surveyed in the study responded that their top priority today is increasing the quantity and quality of their leads.
Customer engagement platform Twilio has integrated with OpenAI’s Realtime API to enable Twilio customers and developers to build AI-powered conversational apps. The integration will support the creation of speech-to-speech voice conversations featuring AI agents. This is an expansion of existing Twilio/OpenAI integrations.