iSelect founder rolls out AI price comparison tool Zyft to stop Aussies from being ripped off

Damien Waller has raised another $7.5m from mostly private investors, valuing his new price comparison tool that aims to splinter Google Shopping’s dominance at $30m.

Damien Waller has develop an AI-powered online shopping deal that aims to splinter Google Shopping’s dominance.

iSelect founder Damien Waller is back, raising $7.5m from investors for his latest venture that aims to splinter Google Shopping’s dominance and stop Australians from being ripped off by big retailers.

Mr Waller has capped off the raise – mainly led by private investment including PSC Insurance founder Paul Dwyer – valuing his new comparison company Zyft, at $30m.

Damien Waller.

The artificial intelligence-powered venture was formed from Mr Waller’s “incubator” at Elsternwick in Melbourne’s southeast that houses about 200 people in a co-working space.

“I exited iSelect about eight years ago and sort of took it pretty easy and then built up a portfolio of new businesses – all operating out of the space in Elsternwick. It’s a closed incubator, if you like,” Mr Waller said.

The companies include CareAbout – which he described as an “iSelect for aged care” – and business-to-business payments player Pay.com.au, as well as flight advisory site Point Hacks.

iSelect was acquired in a $72m deal, priced at 30c a share, by Innovation Holdings Australia – which owned Compare the Market – after a nine-year rollercoaster ride on the ASX. The company raised $215m in one of 2013’s much-hyped floats before its share price crumbled.

Mr Waller has now raised $12.5m from investors for Zyft, which he said was experiencing strong growth and saving Australians thousands a year.

“We’re now at about 550,000 installations so far. That’s growing at 1000 to 2000 per day, which is fantastic,” he said.

“We’re really focusing on that product because we can get the product as tight as we possibly can. That’s going to make users more engaged, more loyal, better word of mouth and it will just spread – even more organically.

“That’s why I have raised the capital. We probably won’t launch overseas … It’s about doubling down on the Australian market – hit one million, two million installations.”

Zyft is aiming to splinter Google's dominance when it comes to finding the best online shopping deal.

Zyft is available via app or desktop. When used on a Chrome browser, a customer can view any product, click on the Zyft extension and a panel will display price comparisons of that product on various sites.

“We basically built up this AI that would scan pretty much the entire market, pretty much every retailer, pretty much every product in the market. So we look at image recognition, the actual title of the product, and that’s all. That’s all basically ingested and stored and matched.

“If you look at Google Shopping, it’s pretty biased and it’s very hard to get the right price, the best price. There is a lot of friction to that buying process.

“And with Google Shopping, typically all the recommendations are generally paid. With Zyft, everything is organic. We don’t have any paid preference listings or anything like that.”

But Zyft does have an affiliate revenue model, in which it gets a “small fee” per product sold.

“That doesn’t affect the prices consumers pay,” he said.

“We’ve also got a number of other revenue streams that we’re thinking about. But the key is, we want to make sure that we’re looking after the consumers. We’re keeping the product unbiased. It’s all organic.”

Originally published as iSelect founder rolls out AI price comparison tool Zyft to stop Aussies from being ripped off