Member Article

YFM completes £5m investment into text analytics company Relative Insight to accelerate product development and drive US expansion

Relative Insight, a fast-growing text analytics platform with an office in Lancaster, plans to expand its operations in the US and strengthen new product development following a £5m growth capital investment by Leeds-headquartered YFM Equity Partners (YFM) through its managed British Smaller Companies VCTs.

The volume of text data such as surveys, reviews, social, customer experience (CX) and voice of the customer (VoC) is exploding and can give crucial insights to decision makers if analysed quickly and easily.

Customers upload data to the Relative Insight platform and the AI-based text analysis techniques highlight critical differences in consumer language to drive deeper insights into digital marketing, consumer analytics and customer experience. With its origins in law enforcement, the Relative Insight technology has been designed to provide the fastest possible time to critical insight and action for market trends, customer service issues, product opinions and marketing campaign effectiveness.

With offices in London, New York and Lancaster, Relative Insight has a growing international client list including leading global companies such as Sky, Nespresso, Starbucks, General Mills, MetLife and Sony.

The investment from YFM will enable Relative Insight to further grow its customer base as well as continuing to develop the platform to provide greater customer insights and data integrations for its clients.

Ben Hookway, CEO of Relative Insight commented: “With an ever-increasing amount of data available to businesses, many are struggling to make sense of this valuable information. This can prove vital in understanding what is causing business outcomes, and what can be done to change them. Our platform is able to rapidly analyse millions of words and compare them across a range of variables to highlight the critical differences in consumer language, helping to explain market trends, customer behaviour and provide actionable insight including making communication more effective with target audiences.

“Having seen rapid growth over the last four years, the business is now embarking on the next stage of its journey as we expand in the US. We believe that YFM is the ideal partner to support us. As well as having an established track record scaling SaaS businesses, they have a real understanding of our market and are a great fit culturally - we like the team and are confident they will add real value.”

YFM has a growing national portfolio of software and tech businesses, including data transformation software company Matillion and innovation intelligence provider Vypr.

Dan Freed, partner at YFM, added: “Data and text analytics is a rapidly expanding market and one with huge potential given the ever-increasing demand for improved business intelligence, and customer insights. The Relative Insight platform is a compelling proposition helping companies to understand why things happen. The heritage of the business resonates with us, and we believe it is a best-in-class platform led by an experienced and very impressive management team.”

The YFM team comprised Dan Freed, Laura Sisson and Ian Waterfield.

Eddie Harding, Partner at ICON Corporate Finance, said: “We’re delighted to have advised Ben and the team on this transaction and were not surprised by the strong level of interest we received from investors. Relative Insight’s highly innovative AI-based text analytics software generates significant value for its clients, and the company is now at a very exciting stage in its growth plan. This funding from YFM will help Relative Insight to scale up its operations considerably, and in particular in the US where there is significant market potential.”

Chris Waterhouse provided financial due diligence; commercial diligence was carried out by Luminii; technical diligence by Beyond M&A; management diligence by Stratton HR; tax diligence by DTE; and legal advice by Irwin Mitchell.

Relative Insight received legal advice from Simmons & Simmons, and the company’s existing institutional shareholders were advised by Ward Hadaway.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Emma Kilmurray .