In Dublin yesterday were (from left) Donal Duffy, director Corporate Banking, Bank of Ireland; Michael Moriarty, director, Corporate Development, Enterprise Ireland; Volodymyr Pigrukh, CEO, Profitero; and Shay Garvey, partner, Delta Partners
It’s been a whirlwind week for Profitero. The company is currently in London, participating in the IBM SmartCamp finals there, plus it has just secured a €750,000 cash injection.
Profitero raised €750,000 through the Bank of Ireland Start-up and Emerging Sectors Equity Fund and Enterprise Ireland.
Despite having just been set up in 2010, the Irish start-up, which provides pricing intelligence to retailers, has already caught the discerning eye of big players such as IBM, as well as venture capitalists such as Delta Partners, plus Enterprise Ireland.
The company was founded by 30-year-old Volodymyr Pigrukh, 29-year-old Dmitry Vysotski, and Kanstantsin Chernysh.
The co-founders have converged from rich technological backgrounds, as they built their expertise while working at Google, IBM and Microsoft in Dublin.
As well as having its headquarters in Dublin, Profitero has offices in Belarus. It won the European Seedcamp 2010 competition and was a finalist of Dublin Web Summit 2010. It also claimed the 2010 Irish Innovation Cubed award.
But what exactly is Profitero’s offering? The company has developed a next-generation pricing intelligence service to retailers for monitoring their competitors’ prices, stock availability and shipping charges. Some of its high-profile customers include Nielsen and Tesco.
The co-founders say their solution simplifies and significantly speeds up the process of collecting and assessing this data. The service can be used by both online and offline retailers. The Profitero platform currently monitors 27.5m products across 2,500 retail websites and the company hopes to grow this number to 100m by the end of 2011.
Speaking today from London, Profitero CEO Volodymyr Pigrukh said the funding of €750,000 is a huge boost.
“Securing this funding means that we can now focus on our strategic goals of further developing the product and expanding into the European and US markets.”
Donal Duffy, head of Enterprise Ireland Relations, Bank of Ireland, spoke about Profitero’s dynamism, today: “They are a true example of how an investment of this type can support an Irish company to strategically grow, which is critical for the company and also as part of Ireland’s economic recovery,” said Duffy.
Create jobs in Ireland
Enterprise Ireland’s Michael Moriarty, manager, Financial & Enterprise Software Department, said the agency was “delighted” to be supporting such an innovative and ambitious company.
“Assisting this type of high-potential young company is a key priority for Enterprise Ireland and is fundamental to building a strong cadre of world-class Irish companies. We look forward to working with Profitero and supporting them to grow their export customer base and create jobs in Ireland,” said Moriarty.
IBM SmartCamp is finishing up today in London. Profitero and Cork-based Radisens Diagnostics are two of the five start-ups from Ireland and the UK taking part in IBM SmartCamp in London. PageHub, RSM and Visible Light Communications are the other finalists. You can watch each of the finalists make their pitch via the IBM Build a Smarter Planet blog, and vote for the venture you think will help progress IBM’s Smarter Planet vision.
