• Fizzback has secured Series B funding led by Nauta Capital. The round also includes the participation of existing investor Advent Venture Partners.
• Fizzback is the only cross-channel platform (sms, email, voice, web) for real-time dialogue between business and its customers at their points of experience.
• Nauta Capital is a Venture Capital firm with offices in Barcelona and Boston, and is specialized in investing in early stage technology companies based in Europe and the US.
• Advent Venture Partners is a Venture Capital firm based in London and specializes in investing in technology and life sciences businesses in Europe and the US.
London, UK October 15, 2009 – Fizzback, Nauta Capital (Nauta) and Advent Venture Partners (Advent) today announced that Fizzback, a company offering a highly differentiated Customer Engagement Platform based in London, UK, has completed a capital increase of £1.6 million. This second round of funding has been led by Nauta. Advent had led the previous £2.5 million round in October 2006.
This second round of funding will allow Fizzback to further consolidate its leadership position in helping consumer companies to drive customer engagement at the point of experience, by continuing its expansion into Continental Europe and the US. Fizzback has to date been commercializing its platform within sales, distribution and customer service centers across sectors, with a particular focus within the Retail, Telecommunications, and Contact Centre verticals with clients such as Tesco, T-Mobile, The Carphone Warehouse, Phones 4u and Marks & Spencer. Large companies are increasingly taking on a more customer centric strategy for sustainable growth, realizing that improving customer satisfaction will increase customer advocacy, customer retention, and ultimately spend and share of wallet. Additionally, Fizzback offers a powerful proposition in its ability to drastically reduce the latency and cost of traditional customer insight, tapping into the multi-billion dollar markets for business intelligence, CRM and market research, driving process improvement by aligning KPIs with customer feedback.
Rob Keve, Fizzback’s founder and CEO declares: “I am delighted to welcome Nauta Capital into the Fizzback fold. Selecting the right partner at this important juncture for Fizzback was crucial. Nauta Capital brings a powerful combination of sector expertise and industry contacts, alongside their funding, which is already providing access to new market opportunities. Advent Ventures’ follow-on investment, builds on our already close partnership, and is a testament to their belief in our ability to continue to build a highly successful business.”
According to Jordi Viñas, General Partner at Nauta Capital, “We share great enthusiasm for the project along with its CEO, Advent, and the rest of investors and team at Fizzback. Fizzback is uniquely positioned to take major consumer companies to a new level of customer centricity by allowing them to listen to and act upon customer feedback in real-time.”
Mike Chalfen, General Partner, Advent Venture Partners said: “Fizzback is incredibly innovative and commercially successful. Its mission to address a large market while continuing to be capital efficient is how great technology companies should be built. We’re pleased to have introduced Nauta to the company as they share this vision and have already added value to the company.”
About Fizzback
Fizzback helps brands to engage with their customers. The Fizzback™ service solicits instant customer feedback at the point of experience and employs a unique artificial intelligence engine to understand the nature, sentiment and tone of comments. Tailored responses are generated and delivered in real-time, driving meaningful conversations. Relevant employees are intelligently alerted, enabling companies to resolve customer issues quickly; and an interactive dashboard, including KPIs and verbatim customer feedback, helps senior management drive their business by voice-of-customer.
Fizzback™ is being used by companies determined to innovate and differentiate themselves through a superior customer experience. In practical terms it is like being able to walk the shop floor 24/7, listening to what your customers are saying and acting upon their insights. Offering a SaaS business model and a strong ROI, based upon improved customer retention and service, its customers include some of the largest retailers and Telecom companies in Europe, including T-Mobile, Tesco and Marks & Spencer.
Headquartered in London, Fizzback is privately owned and backed by Advent Venture Partners and Nauta Capital.
About Advent Venture Partners
Advent Venture Partners is one of Europe’s most established venture and growth capital firms, investing in world-class technology and life science businesses. We seek out remarkable companies that want a pragmatic and well-connected partner by their side. We are dedicated to executing a balanced investment strategy delivering consistent returns for our investors.
Top tier growth equity and venture investors, Advent’s technology team backs leading European technology-driven businesses in Internet, digital media, software and services, telecoms, and cleantech. Some of our investments include: Cartesis, a growth capital investment sold to Business Objects for $300 million; Qype, Europe’s largest local search and review site; The Foundry, Academy Award winning global visual effects software vendor for the post-production industry; and, Echovox, leading global mobile payments solutions provider for media companies. www.adventventures.com
About Nauta Capital
Nauta Capital manages three Venture Capital entities, Nauta Tech Invest I, Nauta Tech Invest II and Nauta Tech Invest III with a total of €165 million under management. Nauta has offices in Barcelona and Boston and invests between €0.5M and €7M in companies in the Technology and Telecommunications sectors. Nauta’s target companies for investment are in their very early stage of development (Seed Capital) and until more advanced stages of development (series A and series B financing rounds). Nauta actively invests in Western Europe and the US. Its current portfolio is composed of 14 companies, 4 of which are based in the US, 2 in the UK and 8 in Spain. www.nautacapital.com
Contact
For Advent Venture Partners
Louise Ballard, Trimedia UK T: +44 +44 20 7025 7505 E: Louise.Ballard@trimediauk.com
Josephine Salm, Trimedia UK T: +44 20 7025 7529 E: Josephine.Salm@trimediauk.com
For Nauta Capital
Carles Ferrer, General Partner, Nauta Capital T: +34935035900 E: carles.ferrer@nautacapital.com