Content Savvy, a Crestlight Investment, Acquired by SmartFocus to Advance Connected Retail Solutions
(PRWEB) September 30, 2014 -- Crestlight Ventures, an investment firm focused on investing and accelerating technology in the Industrial Internet of Things, announces today the acquisition of Content Savvy by SmartFocus to advance the state of the art in Connected Retail.
Crestlight Ventures was the lead investor in Content Savvy, as well as a builder of deep capabilities across business development, operations and exit preparation using the Crestlight Lean Equity for Startups™ model.
“Crestlight saw early on that Content Savvy’s Machine Learning technology would be a critical enabling component for Connected Retail solutions. This acquisition by Smart Focus, a leader in the Connected Retail market is great validation of the Crestlight process,” said Jens Horstmann, a Managing Partner at Crestlight.
“To accelerate a startup from seed to acquisition in less than 24 months is quite an accomplishment, and also a testament to the Crestlight model; a combination of the right seed capital with the right operation team.” said Mitch Lowe, Crestlight limited partner and co-founder of Netflix and President/COO of Redbox™ Automated Retail.
Rohini Srihari, founder and CEO of Content Savvy, who will be joining SmartFocus as Chief Scientist, says: “Content Savvy has been providing state-of-the-art content analytics for customers across multiple industries. We welcome the opportunity to bring these capabilities to SmartFocus in order to offer context-aware marketing, which reflects understanding of customer behavior including numerous other contextual factors.”
Dennison Degregor, Worldwide CRM Executive at HP, says: “The reality is that many businesses cannot cope with the amount of data they have access to in today’s connected world. Therefore it is critical that they have access to tools, like Content Savvy, that not only enable them to capture data, but allow them to analyse that data and act on it instantly.
SmartFocus CEO Rob Mullen concludes: “In the age of The Internet of Everything a key challenge for brands is the need to personalize and contextualize consumer behavior. Content Savvy offers the ability to accurately monitor, digest and analyze what’s being said away from the store.”
The acquisition is a successful demonstration of the Crestlight Lean Equity for Startups™ model and is a foundational proof point for The Connected Industry Fund™.
About Crestlight Ventures
Crestlight Ventures was founded by industry veterans with deep experience developing connected companies, products and teams across retail and manufacturing in Fortune 100 and startup companies. Powered by our proprietary Lean Equity for Startups™ model, Crestlight fills the critical void between seed stage and Series-A investments. Our investment team has collectively built a global startup and innovation lab ecosystem for the world’s largest enterprise software company, been founding members of leading connected companies, and made dozens of seed-stage investments in Internet of Things startups. For more information: http://crestlight.com.
About SmartFocus
SmartFocus is the Internet of Things solution for brands. It includes beacon technology that knows when a customer visits a physical store; real-time predictive recommendations generated at the precise moment they open an email; and powerful insights that use smart analysis of Big Data to effortlessly generate a truly personal experience. Every year, we execute more than five million marketing campaigns, manage more than five billion customer records, and deliver more than 55 billion personalized interactions. Global brands such as French Connection, Speedo and Mercedes-Benz rely on SmartFocus to deliver business-critical, joined-up marketing campaigns that make a difference to their customers and to the growth of their business. For more information: http://www.smartfocus.com
About Content Savvy
Content Savvy was launched to address the growing demand for “Big Data” solutions based on deep, multilingual text mining. The core NLP technology was developed and honed over a decade through support from the Department of Defense as well as private investment. Content Savvy offers content enrichment and analytics as a service – in multiple languages, across multiple industries. Their patented content analytics platform helps organizations leverage their own data and external sources such as social media, news, and industry publications for real-time competitive advantage and effective customer engagement solutions. For more information: http://contentsavvyinc.com
David Borlo, Crestlight Ventures, +1 3124933321, [email protected]
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