Singapore – Martech startup Affable.ai has announced that it has raised US$2m in total funding, which will be used by the startup to bolster its influencer marketing platform to more clients globally who seek aid on running high-impact influencer marketing campaigns.

The funding was backed by venture capital companies Prime Venture Partners, Decacorn Capital, and SGInnovate.

Founded in 2017 by Nisarg Shah and Swayam Narain, Affable’s end-to-end Influencer Marketing Platform allows brands and agencies to streamline their influencer strategies throughout the planning, discovery, activation, and reporting phases. Affable uses advanced machine learning and big data analytics to help brands find influencers, manage and measure campaign performance. 

With the influencer marketing process being extremely manual, time-consuming and completely based on guesswork, Affable provides brands with data-driven insights and analytics to help streamline their micro-influencer marketing process.

Affable also utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning to create accurate influencer-brand mapping and measuring campaign ROIs. In addition, Affable indexes all the social media users and identifies potential influencers that a brand could work with. 

Using Affable, marketers can find influencers, manage them campaign-wise, and measure post-campaign analytics such as engagement from in-target audience, influencer success(as a group and individually), measure the overall effectiveness of the campaign, as well as measure clicks and sales.

According to Nisarg Shah, CEO and co-founder at Affable.ai, they see a huge opportunity in working with brands to enable the much needed, data-driven influencer marketing campaigns, as the brands and agencies, they work with reinforce their belief in the need for analytics to streamline the micro-influencer marketing process. 

“Prime brings a depth of experience in scaling global SaaS companies, operational expertise, as well as a strong network that we can leverage during our growth phase and we are very excited to partner with them. At the same time, participation from our existing investors is a great endorsement for us,”

Affable currently serves a multitude of over 45 top brands and agency clients including Huawei, Wipro, Pomelo, Fresh, Omnicom, dentsu, and WE Communications. The company tracks more than three Million Influencers across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.

Stockholm, Sweden – Global software Bambuser, which primarily specializes in interactive live video streaming, has announced the acquisition of global martech company Relatable, as both companies are vying to use their combined resources to empower the future of live video shopping as well as influencer marketing campaigns.

The acquisition, valued at US$24m, will also help enable brands and retailers to scale high-impact livestream shopping implementations and drive business results.

Bambuser’s recent move follows after a year of remarkable growth for Bambuser and widespread adoption of the company’s SaaS solutions for interactive e-commerce. The two companies will operate and service customers independently, yet collaboratively. 

In line with the acquisition, Relatable founder Martin Garbarczyk will join Bambuser’s executive team as chief revenue officer (CRO), contributing his extensive experience building high-performing sales organizations to further accelerate Bambuser’s global growth.

“Bambuser and Relatable are a match made in heaven. I’m excited to build a global sales organization that leverages the enormous market demand and fuels growth to our SaaS business,” Garbarczyk said.

As a first step in the new relationship, Bambuser will add creative and strategic services from Relatable to its customers, enabling them to amplify campaigns before, during, and after Live Video Shopping events. Teams will be co-located in Sweden, the U.S. and U.K., where each company has an established presence, to enhance synergies and drive opportunities for cross- and upselling.

“By joining forces with Relatable, we increase our market pole position with an unrivaled SaaS offering that clearly differentiates us from the competition,” said Maryam Ghahremani, CEO of Bambuser.

Singapore – Data Analytics Ventures, Inc, the loyalty and data business unit of Philippine conglomerate JG Summit Holdings, has tapped the services of marketing technology company Antsome to empower its data-related product and services marketing to its market by integrating Antsome’s customer data platform Antsomi CDP 365.

JG Summit is one of the largest and most diversified Filipino conglomerates, engaged primarily in businesses that serve a diverse market in the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and Australia with businesses that span retail, airline, consumer goods, manufacturing, and more.

Antsomi CDP 365 is an artificial intelligence-driven customer data platform which helps companies unify their customer data from multiple sources, such as mobile apps, web, social media, digital ads, customer relationship management (CRM), Point-of-sale (POS), offline channels, among others. It then delivers relevant activations with rich personalization across multiple touchpoints via both online and offline.

Furthermore, the CDP empowers companies to understand their customers’ behavior and intent across various channels and build a 1-to-1 customer journey at scale.

Serm Teck Choon, co-founder and CEO at Antsomi, is thrilled to have DAVI as their client, stating that DAVI is tasked to be the change agent for the JG Summit group, and they are born with the DNA of data.

“We are so excited to have the opportunity to work with them to unlock the opportunity of data-driven campaigns. Through Antsomi CDP 365, we help DAVI to enrich the customer experience of millions of customers through marketing automation,” Serm stated.

Speaking about the integration, Carla Yap-Sy Su, head of data, strategy and growth marketing at DAVI, commented, “Building a holistic approach to data allows us to better understand what offers and experiences can bring more value to our customers.”

She added, “Through our partnership with Antsomi, we are able to act on these insights and implement seamless and personalized customer journeys, integrate our platforms,and deliver iterative, performance-driven campaigns across multiple channels.”

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – The Malaysian arm of consumer data and analytics company, Milieu, has announced a new executive joining its team – Aaron Low – to take charge of its commercial operations in the country.

Low is a seasoned martech expert, and consultant, coming from data technology company Zanroo, where he brings over eight years of experience working in martech and software-as-a-service (SaaS) industries. Through his new role, Low will be responsible for building up the sales pipeline and commercial operations for Malaysia, and forging strategic partnerships.

Low was regional strategic partnerships and business development head for APAC at Zanroo. He has also worked with the Malaysia arm of IT services company Meltwater, where he served as a senior business development consultant; and with corporate media marketing company, marcus evans Group, as a corporate sales executive.

Commenting on his appointment, Low Said, “After meeting Milieu for the first time, I got really excited about the product, company vision, and the team. A lot of businesses fail to make the right decisions simply because market research is too complex, too slow, or too expensive. Milieu’s approach really resonates with me in terms of how it can be used to help companies of all shapes and sizes make better decisions.”

Low will report to Marcus Lim, Milieu’s regional head of growth in APAC.

“2020 was a milestone year for us, and we’re proud of what we accomplished with a small team and in the face of the global pandemic. We saw incredibly strong demand for our product in the market as many businesses, both big and small, are now under immense pressure to make data-driven decisions in the face of tight budgets. We’re excited to welcome Aaron to the team and to start building up a base of clients in Malaysia,” Lim stated.

Singapore – Data and artificial intelligence company ADA has announced the launch of its new martech-as-a-service offering across Asia-Pacific to help clients optimize end-to-end sales and marketing efforts.

Through the new service, users can analyze a client’s business operations across the sales and marketing funnel by consulting and matching with ADA’s existing expertise to grow and scale. The new service can also help clients choose the right Martech solutions that match the business maturity level and to optimize current stacks.

“ADA has continuously evolved to create new ways for businesses to adopt data-driven marketing. We are excited to offer these new MarTech services that complete the circle for our clients by allowing them to look at their full sales and marketing funnel with an always-on approach,” said Srinivas Gattamneni, CEO of ADA.

Furthermore, ADA’s new solution can act as an extended arm of the client to enable, train, and scale in-house talent to ensure continuity of strategy and execution. Clients will benefit from this new addition to the current suite of products and services, as ADA continues to use existing data analytics skill sets to drive impactful business outcomes.

The new martech solution responds to the greater need of businesses for updated marketing measures. According to Gartner, some 80% of organizations feel they are sitting on an outdated MarTech roadmap, and 67% think their existing technology is not useful. Meanwhile, a study by Harvard Business Review found that 80% of marketers want better tools to measure return on investment.

“ADA’s MarTech services exist to support businesses in unlocking the full potential of their MarTech investments and to drive growth across all their sales and marketing channels. We believe business growth is not driven by one solution, but many tactics and approaches. We want to be there to collaborate with our clients through the entire journey and to grow together,” said Chris Wiseman, head of marketing technology at ADA.

Manila, Philippines – Marketing technology engagement platform Zoomd has announced a new deal with Philippine-based media company GMA Network, in embedding Zoomd’s on-site search engine within GMA’s platform.

Through the partnership, Zoomd aims to increase the page views of GMA News’ site, decrease bounce rate, and extend average session length for GMA web visitors, which is estimated to be more than 200 million.

“This is a hot period for our sector and we intend to maximize monetization opportunities and target regional expansion, getting more publishers and more clients to adopt Zoom onto their platforms. The Philippines is an important and strong market for us and we welcome GMA to our line of top-tier publishing clients,” said Amit Bohensky, chairman and co-Founder of Zoomd.

Zoomd uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) technology, which is aimed to provide new advantages to publishers by optimizing site traffic via on-site search, and guiding advertisers in managing their user acquisition (UA) across hundreds of media channels.

Founded in 2012, Zoomd allows advertisers to save significant resources that would otherwise be spent consolidating data sources, thereby maximizing data collection and data insights while minimizing the resources spent on the exercise. 

Further, Zoomd is a performance-based platform that allows advertisers to advertise to the relevant target audiences using a key performance indicator-algorithm that is focused on achieving the advertisers’ goals and targets.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Marketing technology consultancy, admiral.digital, has acquired Fresh Sports Group (FSG), strengthening its consultancy offering across the entire digital spectrum, and rebranding FSG as admiral.sports.

Under the acquisition, admiral.digital will bring expertise in brand creation, content development, campaign execution, and business strategy. The uniting of the two companies enables admiral.digital to enhance its executive team, strengthen its marketing technology consultancy offering and expand into an exciting new sales channel – sports. 

For Pieter Van den Eynde, founder of admiral.digital, the recent acquisition is in line with their company mission of making them thrive in the digital world. As such, being digitally-inclined is especially relevant for businesses to innovate aggressively, therefore, the deal will further enhance their digital capabilities to service clients better.

“We see this as a natural move in the right direction. Even prior to the deal, we found the FSG team to be a strong ally, having worked closely with them on multiple collaborations over a number of years. We also recognize that sports technology is an exciting market to dive into with tremendous potential. Moving forward, admiral.sports will play a highly integrated and complementary role, creating a dynamic synergy, thereby fortifying our core business where the end result is truly greater than the sum of its parts,” he stated.

Furthermore, the acquisition will have Van den Eynde lead the Group’s aggressive growth agenda, with co-founder Alec Van Noten focused on building the company’s ‘Technology as a Service’ proposition in the role of chief product officer.

Other leadership movements include FSG’s co-founder Sam Middlehurst taking up the role of chief executive officer and is tasked with setting the strategic direction and assembling the building blocks for the next stage of growth. Completing the impressive executive team as chief marketing officer is fellow FSG co-founder Tim Johnston, who brings with him a wealth of brand creation, marketing, and managerial expertise.

“We collectively share a vision to make marketing technology more accessible to more brands. By joining forces, we now cover the entire digital spectrum, from strategy to technology to creative; enabling us to service a broad spectrum of cross-industry and cross-category clients,” Middlehurst commented. 

The acquisition will serve as an opportunity to launch a new ‘go-to-market’ execution framework for clients; connecting technology, data, and marketing to drive better customer experiences and deliver results for clients. This new strategy has been supported by a refreshed brand identity, which projects a shared passion for marketing and technology. 

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Mimpikita, a local-based modest fashion label, has appointed martech company elfo in elevating its digital advertising and performance marketing initiatives.

Through the one-year partnership, elfo will be executing year-long bite-sized campaigns for Mimpikita to streamline and amplify its brand identity, as well as to align with the modest fashion label’s goals to be inclusive and provide meaningful experiences to its community known as #KitaGirls.

Furthermore, elfo will be running campaigns hand-in-hand with Mimpikita’s planned collections for the year. The campaigns, which will be deployed across all digital touchpoints – website, social media, email, conversational bot – are expected to build and uplift a Mimpikita community built on inclusivity, empowerment, and universal acceptance.

Mimpikita, originally founded by three sisters – Nurul, Amirah, and Syahira Zulkifli – has been in the fashion industry for more than 12 years, and has since then garnered a ‘local cult based on bespoke ready-to-wear pieces’, according to Rose Maria Bague, senior account manager at elfo.

“What we can bring to the table is our expertise in helping brands and businesses establish a solid brand identity and increase overall share of voice (SOV), by providing Mimpikita with brand consulting, performance optimization across all of its digital channels, and lead-generation campaigns,” Bague stated.

Meanwhile, Sri Yosephin, head at elfo, stated that their contribution to Mimpikita is part of the fashion brand’s aspiration to expand globally, as their fashion pieces have been prominently featured at the Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week and had intimate collaborations with other local designers.

From left to right – Syahira, Nurul, Amirah Zulkifli, Co-Founders of Mimpikita

“Our service offerings for Mimpikita are part of a bigger plan for this modest fashion label to go global. Besides harnessing our digital marketing expertise, we are also utilizing elfo’s proprietary digital platforms such as elfoMAP (an email marketing automation platform), elfoA2P (an application-to-person messaging platform), and soon, elfoBOT (an intuitive chatbot), to complement and enable our strategic campaigns for Mimpikita,” Yosephin explained.

For one of the founders, Nurul Zulkifli, their recent partnership with elfo will center on keeping their values with the #KitaGirls community, regardless of progress and expansion.

“As we continue to evolve and expand with the help of elfo, designing carefully crafted pieces for the everyday woman will still be at the heart of Mimpikita. Our wish is to build an inclusive community, to inspire women all over the world with our casualwear,” she added. 

Bengaluru, India – Local-based mobile marketing startup Whistle has announced the launch of its PIN code feature in its platform to target hyper-localized marketing strategies for locals.

The feature, which utilizes the country’s Postal Index Number (PIN), allows marketers to specifically target local audiences that may be interested in a marketing campaign using data sets catered to the endpoint PIN code. 

This allows marketers to directly promote their campaign to consumers in the form of promotions like deals, discounts & Diwali bumper offers, introducing new goods & products, offering home delivery service, special opening hours during festivals & occasions, and many others.

“With most businesses being severely impacted by the pandemic across the country, small size firms, entrepreneurs and shop keepers are particularly struggling to stay afloat. Our aim is to empower these enterprises digitally through MarTech; help them overcome such obstacles and grow their businesses by making marketing technology tools available at an affordable cost,” Satya Kiran, CEO of Whistle said.

Launched in 2019, the company has since then ventured into providing martech solutions for its clients.

Singapore – India-headquartered IT and consulting firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has partnered with global technology company Zoho to adopt its solutions in customer relationship management, IT service management, and e-commerce for its global-wide businesses.

Within the partnership, TCS will utilize Zoho’s technological application stack in data analytics, AI business leverage, and unified search to help improve their clients’ approach to CX strategy, design, and customer insights as well as in marketing, sales, and service transformation.

“TCS has a business-led approach to consulting and enterprise transformation. Zoho takes the same approach to its technology, offering a vertically integrated platform of leading business applications and services. We are confident that through TCS’ reach and influence in the market across 46 countries, more enterprise organizations globally will experience the benefits of Zoho’s deep technology stack and world-class applications,” said Sridhar Vembu, co-founder and CEO of Zoho Corporation.

Furthermore, the alliance will allow future business clients to explore new revenue opportunities and gain operational efficiency, whether from remote or in-office locations.

“Enterprises are adopting best-of-breed product suites for customer service functions, because they provide the digital power and flexibility required to create the right engaging customer experience at the right moment,” said Aarti Devi, global head of customer experience management and enterprise application services at TCS.