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Newcastle tech startup raises €1m of investment to grow into Europe

Technology company Verticly, which helps brands engage with customers both online and offline, has raised over €1 million of investment to continue an impressive growth story which started in 2013 at the 2013 Ignite programme in Newcastle.

Verticly offers brands a SaaS platform that uses customer data to help personalise engagement. The technology provides real time insights to advertisers, which enables them to provide more relevant offers to customers and to personalise social retargeting, ultimately driving offline sales.

The firm, which has a London base to complement its Newcastle office, secured investment from UK venture capital firm Northstar Ventures, Greek VC firm PJ Tech and several angel investors. Verticly also won an Innovate UK Smart Award which provided it with funding to help it grow and scale.

The investment will be used to facilitate the company’s expansion, with funds from the Finance for Business North East Accelerator Fund being used to grow its office in Newcastle and funds from PJ Tech’s Catalyst Fund enabling Verticly to launch an engineering and data science hub in Greece.

Ryan Klizat, Co-founder and CEO of Verticly said: “We’ve seen a great demand from some of the world’s biggest manufacturer / fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) advertisers who can feel disconnected from their customers, who primarily buy in retail stores that advertisers don’t own.

“Verticly is an o2o (Online to Offline) Platform which provides the data to link digital and above-the-line ad spend with physical transactions, enabling better one-to-one advertising. It’s more efficient for everyone: the brand, retailer, agency and customer. As well as providing these insights, we focus on predicting future mobile buying intent based on high quality data.

“We are significantly investing in the infrastructure that will enable FMCG brands the scale to quickly roll out and optimise campaigns across all the global territories in which they operate, building upon the 90%+ in-store transaction tracking coverage we already have with grocery retailers in the USA and UK.”

The recent investment round is the latest in a string of successes for the start-up, which has secured contracts with global media company Group M Mindshare, and internationally recognised brands such as Unilever. Verticly also works with the world’s largest coupon provider Valassis, to help clients track online-to-offline engagement and sales.

Rick Charnley, Investment Manager at Northstar Ventures, said: “Verticly is going from strength to strength and the latest investment round will enable it to continue to grow its operations both in Europe and further afield.

“For Northstar, Verticly represents a long-term partnership and we are proud to have supported it from inception. From graduating from the 2013 Ignite programme in Newcastle, to securing clients in the US and opening a data centre in Greece, Verticly continues to impress with the calibre of clients it is working with and the team’s ambitious growth plans.”

Ion Tsakonas, CEO at PJ Tech, said: “We are very excited to be supporting Verticly’s international expansion plans. The combination of an experienced team, operations in a growing space and the company’s presence in Greece (where they will locate their developers after our investment) give us confidence that this is an international success story in the making.”