Search’XPR raises €1.9 million to scale-up its consumer insight solution Oorace

 

Clermont-Ferrand based startup, Search’XPR, has just closed at 2nd financing round at 1.9 million euros. This round included a diverse group of investors, including Shanghai-based Unicore Technology Company, Sofimac Partners, BPI, the region of Auvergne, and e-business company Event.  This new round brings the total funds they’ve raised thus far to €3.2 million. Search’XPR was founded in 2011 by previous IT professors Olivier Figon and  Jean-Luc Marini.
With this new investment Search’XPR’s objective is to transform how we understand online consumers’ motivations and behaviours, but also how to create more interaction and loyalty between consumers and e-commerce vendors. Their solution to achieve this, Oorace, leverages artificial intelligence and cognitive sciences to get at what motivates consumers and drives them to act and ideally, in the case of commerce, buy. Although the primary target for Oorace is e-commerce they also expect that it can generate significant value for media content platforms, ad agencies, search engines, social networks and big data/data analytics companies.  They’ve already begun generating revenues, which they anticipate to reach 600k-800k euros this year.
According to cofounder Olivier Figon, this new investment will not only be important to supporting further development on the product side and expanding their offer to new business segments, but will also help fuel their expansion across Europe and China, which they’ve recently entered. They estimate this new funding will support their activities for the next year or so, and anticipate that they’ll raise another round within the next 12-18 months to support the next phase of their growth.