Insider will use the fresh funds to enter the U.S. market, expand its R&D team, and enhance its platform’s capabilities
Singapore marketing SaaS startup Insider announced in a press release today that it has bagged US$32 million in a Series C funding round led by Riverwood Capital, with participation from Sequoia, Wamda, and Endeavor Catalyst.
The startup had last raised $11 million in a Series B funding round led by Sequoia India more than two years ago. The latest investment brings Insider’s total funding to $47 million, according to the statement.
Insider will use the fresh funds to expand to the U.S., enhance its platform’s capabilities, expand the R&D team, and invest in the company’s global sales and marketing efforts, according to the statement.
Founded in 2012, Insider began operations in a small house in Turkey and helped optimize various digital marketing campaigns. It moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2018, and currently has over 550 employees from 24 countries, with 50% of its top executives, including its CEO Hande Cilingir, being women.
Cilingir was also selected as one of the top women CEOs outside of the U.S. by Crunchbase in 2018.
The startup’s clientele includes more than 800 global brands including UNIQLO, Singapore Airlines, Marks & Spencer, Estée Lauder, Virgin, Samsung, Carrefour, Dominos, Toyota, Newsweek, Avon, MediaMarkt, AVIS, Allianz, BBVA, IKEA and CNN.
According to Insider, marketers encounter numerous tools that claim to be “multi-channel” and provide a “hub.” However, consumer data is mostly siloed and the end product is a point-solution that creates disjointed experiences for consumers and severely impacts marketing ROI.
“In the marketing software space, everyone claims that they are “multichannel” or “all-in-one,” yet most of those platforms are not fully comprehensive and solution-oriented,” said Francisco Alvarez-Demalde, Co-founder & Managing Partner at Riverwood Capital.
Insider’s AI-powered platform enables enterprise marketers to connect ****customer data across channels and systems, predict **their future behavior with an AI-**powered intent engine, and orchestrate and deliver personalized experiences to customers, according to the statement.
According to the company, Insider’s AI intent engine consists of over 15 algorithms that enable marketers to make precise predictions such as which customer segments are likely to convert, buy, and churn, to help them design the most optimized experiences accordingly.
The startup’s Multichannel Growth Management Platform (GMP) helps digital marketers drive growth across the funnel, from acquisition to activation, retention, and revenue (AARR), thereby impacting ROI metrics such as conversion rate, CAC, LTV, and average order value.
By leveraging real-time predictive segmentation powered by deep Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities, the GMP empowers marketers to deliver personalized campaigns across the web, mobile web, mobile apps, messaging, email, and ad channels.
According to the startup, the GMP is built on a unified data layer and is easy to use and can be integrated in minutes, eliminating the need for long and complex integration processes and dependency on IT teams. Insider claims to help marketers drive growth for their brands across channels with zero marketing waste.
Cilingir explained that the startup did not want to raise capital too soon, since Insider is profitable, but the startup continued to receive strong interest from VCs.
“We’ve only raised capital when we felt that we were ready to raise the bar to a whole new level. A self-imposed scarcity always made us more creative, more resourceful and more aggressive in reaching our goals,” she said.
“Our minds are set on becoming the #1 platform of choice of marketers worldwide and we have already set bold plans into motion,” she further wrote in the company’s blog post announcing the latest fundraise.
The global pandemic brought a huge shift in consumer behavior and increasing demand for ecommerce. Insider claims that its agile sales team was well-positioned to turn the increasing traffic into conversions by helping their partners respond to ‘net new digital behaviors’ in real time.
The startup expects to continue in its accelerated growth trajectory as more and more consumers move online, and companies scramble to digitize operations.
“Insider, leveraging its unique culture and its focus on customer intimacy, brings a fresh approach in building a truly multichannel next-generation platform, as recently validated by their position on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs 2020,” said Alvarez-Demalde.
“We liked the Insider team from the first days, but have been positively surprised by their highly efficient go-to-market engine,” said Pieter Kemps, Principal, Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore. “The quality of customer interactions, combined with exceptional product and technology, has enabled Insider to stand out among the many point-solutions out there – and build up a very impressive list of customer logos.”
Header image courtesy of Insider
