Artesian Solutions Raises £2Million in Financing
Funding led by Octopus to further accelerate Artesian’s growth
Artesian Solutions (“Artesian”), a leading provider of cloud-based Social CRM and brand surveillance software, today announced that Octopus has invested £2Million to support Artesian’s explosive growth as market demand for social CRM solutions continues to climb[1]. Luke Hakes of Octopus will be joining the Artesian Board.
Octopus has a strong track record in supporting capital-efficient businesses that have the potential to create, transform or dominate their industry. With nearly £2.5 billion in assets under management, other high profile investments include Zoopla, Graze.com, TouchType and Calastone.
Artesian will use the Series A investment to significantly increase its sales and marketing operations in new and existing vertical markets. Additionally the funding will be used to increase investment in engineering, new product development and service delivery to existing customers.
Andrew Yates, Artesian Solutions’ Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder says:
“This investment from Octopus will allow us to drive a significant gear-change in our sales, marketing and engineering efforts, which means that we’ll be able to target customers in new sectors in entirely new ways. With this support from Octopus, we will now have the financial resources to fully express our vision for this exciting market.”
Luke Hakes from Octopus said: “Artesian is helping a wide variety of companies understand that successful sales and marketing requires more than just knowledge about products and services. Octopus invests in teams we can believe in, rather than focusing on specific sectors, so, having looked carefully at the level of customised intelligence that Artesian already provides to large enterprises, and on meeting the extremely talented team at Artesian, their potential was clear to us.”
Artesian is currently working with a number of the UK’s largest banks, including Barclays, Santander and HSBC, as well as marquee customers in other industry sectors including Aviva (Insurance), Global Radio (Media), Sanofi-Aventis (Pharmaceuticals) and Business Stream (Utilities). The company, which is growing at over 200% year-on-year, appears in the Deloitte Fast 500, which recognises technology companies that have achieved the fastest rates of revenue growth in EMEA[2], and was recently named as a Gartner “Cool Vendor” in the CRM category. Artesian’s technology delivers highly relevant and contextual information from web and social media sources that are tailored to each person receiving the service.
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/30/gartner-social-crm-market-will-reach-1b-in-revenue-by-2012/
[2] http://www.deloitte.co.uk/fast500emea/
About Artesian Solutions
Artesian’s Social CRM solution is a cloud-based service that accelerates sales velocity through more effective sales engagement. Artesian helps sales-driven organisations build strong and deep relationships with customers and then translate those relationships into revenue. Artesian’s customers include Barclays, HSBC, Santander, Aviva, Global Radio, Sanofi-Aventis and more. The company is helping thousands of sales, marketing and customer service oriented subscribers to reduce the cost, time and pain of filtering the web and social media to attain the right client sales intelligence to find and close bigger deals faster.
Artesian recently graduated from the Microsoft BizSparkOne program, where it was named one of Microsoft’s Global Partner’s of the Year.
About Octopus Investments
Octopus Investments, founded in 2000, is a leading investment specialist. We offer innovative core and satellite investment solutions to UK investors, and a wide range of funding options for exceptional companies.
Our core investments include a discretionary management service, multi-manager multi-asset open ended investment companies (OEICS), and single manager OEICS. These are complemented by our range of satellite solutions, including venture capital trusts, enterprise investment schemes and inheritance tax products. Each product has been designed to solve specific problems faced by financial advisers and their clients.
Our funding solutions cover the entire capital structure, from equity through mezzanine to senior debt, and we seek out outstanding management teams in unlisted companies with whom we can partner.
Octopus has built its business around three core pillars: customer led innovation, excellence in customer service and the quality of our people. We employ more than 200 people and currently have more than £2.3 billion in assets under management.
Octopus has won a number of awards for its products and customer service. We have twice been voted one of the best 100 SMEs to work for by the Sunday Times, and we are one of only two fund management companies to be AAA rated by financial advisers for customer service.
