Founders Bidemi Afolabi and Lauren O’Reilly. Image: ProMotion
ProMotion Rewards, which connects brands and customers through an app, was backed in the pre-seed round by LSV, Delta Partners and Enterprise Ireland.
Irish start-up ProMotion Rewards has secured €725,000 in pre-seed investment to help brands understand customer behaviour while rewarding shoppers.
Founded by pharmacy graduates Bidemi Afolabi and Lauren O’Reilly, ProMotion is on a mission to change how people and brands connect with each other.
Through its app, ProMotion lets shoppers upload photos of receipts, scan e-receipts, complete surveys and enter competitions – earning them points for each activity. Brand partners can then identify when their products have been bought and provide bonus points to shoppers.
These points then add up and ProMotion converts them into rewards such as gift cards. The points can also be donated to a charity of choice through the app.
“We believe that wherever value is created, value should also be received – if consumer data is gathered, then it should be the consumer that reaps the benefit,” said O’Reilly.
“That’s why when people submit their shopping insights to ProMotion Rewards, we reward the consumer directly and they can choose to either spend or donate those rewards.”
ProMotion was initially founded at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and was a winner at the Trinity LaunchBox student accelerator programme in 2020. At the time, it focused on connecting brands with bicycle owners – allowing them to advertise using bikes as a medium while promoting a healthy lifestyle.
Now focused on consumer rewards, the start-up is committed to helping brands better understand who their customers are.
“We use the insight gathered to not only help consumer goods brands better understand and serve their audience, but we also provide the platform for them to reach the right consumers, with the right message, at the right time,” said O’Reilly.
The investment was led by Laidlaw Scholars Ventures (LSV) with participation from Delta Partners and Enterprise Ireland.
Prior to this round, ProMotion had received around €50,000 from a combination of early angel funding and support from the New Frontiers programme at TU Dublin Blanchardstown, Dublin City Local Enterprise Office and LaunchBox.
Afolabi, who is also a full-stack software developer, was awarded a Laidlaw Research and Leadership scholarship at TCD.
“As a Laidlaw Scholar, I have been following the incredible work the organisation has been doing since I joined the network, and when I heard of the launch of their fund, I was excited to see how we could work together to grow ProMotion Rewards vision into a reality,” he said.
“With this round of funding, we look forward to achieving our goals of becoming the consumer rewards platform of the future.”
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