Dublin-based e-commerce intelligence player Profitero has raised US$8m in financing from top US venture capital firm Polaris Ventures, enabling it to double its workforce to 80 people and expand in North America.
The company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform provides brands and retailers with e-commerce intelligence and valuable online insights. It counts Staples, Sam’s Club, Waitrose and Acodo among its 50+ global customer base from which it monitors over 220m prices in real-time.
“The Profitero vision is to become the Nielsen of the online world for global retailers and brands”, said Irfan Salim, whose previous company MarkMonitor (also Polaris-backed) was acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2012.
“They are solving a very real need, particularly for global brands, and they are solving it with a highly scalable technology platform as opposed to another people-intensive manual solution”.
Whilst e-commerce is still only a small percentage of total sales for most global brands, it is the fastest-growing channel, with revenues typically increasing by more than 30pc year-on-year.
As such it is the most significant channel for global consumer brands. The increasing influence of the online channel is highlighted in figures from research firm Forrester which suggest that web-influenced retail sales will reach US$1.8 trillion by 2017.
Profitero is growing at 300pc a year
“We are excited to partner with Polaris as we look to continue growing our business by 300pc year-on-year and to build out our North American business,” said Vol Pigrukh, Co-Founder and CEO of Profitero. Commenting on the appointment of Irfan Salim to Board of the company, Vol noted,
“MarkMonitor and Profitero have very similar business models and Irfan’s input and guidance will be highly valuable for Profitero to ensure we deliver the best service to both our US and global customers.”
Noel Ruane, venture partner with Polaris said that Profitero has many unfair advantages over its competition, not least of which is its web data collection and product matching capabilities which are easily scalable to all product categories and applicable for all geographies and languages.
“Their best in-class technology, combined with an intuitive easy-to-use web interface, gives brands and retailers both immediate and enduring value,” Ruane explained.
Data intelligence image via Shutterstock
