Israeli user-generated content marketing platform Yotpo has raised $51 million in a financing round led by Claltech, the technology investment arm of Len Blavatnik's Access Industries. Vertex Venture Capital also participated in the financing round as well as previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Vintage Investment Partners, Blumberg Capital, Radium and others. The Tel Aviv based company, which also has offices in New York City, has raised $101 million to date including $22 million earlier this year and $15 million last year.
Yotpo's products are now used by 200,000 sites. The products provide users wanting to buy a certain product on these sites with a platform to read the reviews of consumers who have already purchased the product. Yotpo says that the platform increases sales by 5% to 15%. Yotpo is an acronym for Your Opinion The Public Opinion
CEO Tomer Tagrin and CTO Omri Cohen founded Yotpo in 201. Tagrin told "Globes," "We weren't looking to raise money at this particular time. Our original plan was not to raise money until the beginning of 2018 but we received three proposals from bodies that hadn't yet invested in the company. At that point we turned to our existing investors and they all said that they would be happy to invest more."
Tagrin said that the new investment will be used to increase the number of the company's employees from 270 (of which 170 are in Israel) to 420. "The money will also let us make acquisitions in Israel and abroad. We've had two very strong years and we hope to maintain the momentum"
The company does not disclose its revenue but says it has grown significantly in the past 20 months. Yotpo says that it currently has 70,000 small and medium business customers and provides information to 500,000 users per month.
Tagrin added, "We have had offers to sell Yotpo but we really believe that we can build a large company. We're still not even close to all the market or realizing our full potential. We're enjoying ourselves."
The technology is essentially designed to cope with an increasing problem on the web - fake reviews. Tagrin explains, "I saw a review about a camera on the Internet and it made a fool out of me because it turned out to be really terrible. Our technology lets you know that a genuine customer is involved who really ordered the product. If we can't create authenticity with our solution then it's worthless."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 8, 2017
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