Irish ecommerce firm secures $20m in funding

Clavis Insight, the Irish provider of ecommerce store analytics to consumer goods companies, has secured a $20 million growth equity investment, which it will use to accelerate international growth and create more jobs.

It’s the biggest investment to date for the company which was founded in Dublin in 2008, and has since expanded to Boston, Shanghai and London.

Accel-KKR, a US technology-focused private equity investment firm will join existing investors in making the investment, which will be used to support Clavis’ strategic growth initiatives. These include the expansion of sales and customer support efforts in the US, Europe and China and the continued innovation in its ecommerce platform, which monitors online retailers across more than 20 countries.

"The investment partnership with Accel-KKR allows Clavis to effectively capitalise on the growth opportunities ahead of the business, significantly broaden its leadership position in the industry and better support our consumer goods customer base," chief executive Garry Moroney said, adding, "It's their first time investing in Clavis and in an Irish company. The reason why it is great to have a US VC fund, is that they do have deeper pockets and bigger funds available".

Accel-KKR is about helping companies scale their revenue in the $10-$100m range, and “that’s the growth path we want to go on over the next couple of years” Mr Moroney said.

Mr Moroney expects that the investment will help Clavis take advantage of the continued growth in online shoppers, with figures suggesting that about1.7 billion consumers will shop online by 2018, representing close to 20 per cent of the world’s population.

“It’s really about scaling the business to become a global leader,” he said, adding that Clavis’ long-term goal is to be the global leader in the space, and to move into other adjacenet verticals area like toys and sports equipment, consumer electronics, and DIY.

And Mr Moroney is not just targeting a trade sale in the short-term.

“Personally, my ambition is to go well beyond that point,” he says, noting that he started another company in 2000 which was acquired in 2006 by a big US tech company.

“Having had that experience my goal this time around is to build a much bigger company,” he says.

Clavis Insight was founded by Moroney in Dublin at the start of 2008, and its main software development and data analytics teams remain in Dublin. Today Clavis employs about 150 people. It automatically performs the equivalent of in-store audits for brands, but for the online channel, and counts Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, Mondelez and Mars, among its customers.