Brighton social media business attracts £13m investment to boost growth

A social media business that was started in Brighton seven years ago has raised £13.1 million to fund the next phase of its growth.

Brandwatch, which also has operations in New York, San Francisco, Berlin and Stuttgart, provides marketing intelligence, product research, real-time customer service and reputation management.

The Brighton and Hove Independent free weekly newspaper reports today (Friday 23 May) that the social media monitoring and analytics business raised £3.6 million from investors in 2012.

The latest fundraising round was led by Highland Capital Partners Europe, a new investor, with significant participation from Nauta Capital and other existing investors.

Nauta led the previous round of fundraising in 2012 and before that the Gorkana Group also invested in Brandwatch.

The Brighton and Hove Independent said: “The company grew revenue by more than 100 per cent and expanded its global presence beyond Europe and North America with strong customer growth across South America and Asia.

“Clients include Whole Foods, Verizon, Whirlpool, Pepsico, British Airways and Dell.

“The company plans to use the funding to double its product and engineering teams, to triple its investment in physical infrastructure and to significantly accelerate implementation of new data sources with a particular focus on emerging social platforms in Asia.

“The company will also continue to capitalise on its rapid international and North American expansion where more than 1,000 brands, including 30 Fortune 100 companies, currently use its social intelligence platform to gather and manage actionable, timely insights from the social web.

“As the impact of social media has quickly spread throughout nearly all departments of an organisation, Brandwatch has continued to expand its product reach.”

Last year Brandwatch started Vizia, its social command centre platform.

It has been described as a dynamic, multi-screen display that beautifully showcases social data in real-time for brands including Monster and Moneygram.