Data-driven marketing company Stirista raises $13m in growth equity financing

Data-driven marketing solutions provider Stirista announced in a blog today that they have raised $13m in growth equity financing which was led by Wavecrest Growth Partners and had participation from Dennis Ainge, a founding executive of TARGUSinfo and a former executive at Neustar. 

The announcement said the company plans to use the capital to enhance its Customer Data Hub, make relevant company acquisitions, and continue to increase its leadership team. 

The data-driven marketing company was founded in 2009 by co-founders Ajay and Candice Gupta with the goal to become the premier data-driven digital marketing solutions provider that brands can trust to help them increase conversions and customer retention. 

​Stirista’s co-founder and CEO Ajay Gupta stated what the investment meant for the companies future by saying: “It is a testament to our highly skilled team that we accomplished so much without external funding. We have an incredible number of homegrown heroes that continue to innovate and impress. With the Wavecrest partnership, we’re going to rapidly accelerate organic growth and put San Antonio at the forefront of data and technology. Our plan is to become the partner of choice for brands when they need privacy-compliant data, high-impact customer analytics, and effective omnichannel marketing solutions.”

Stirista’s business collects and analyses client’s data for them to make informed choices and develop data-driven marketing strategies instead of guessing at what ad strategies or marketing campaigns to run. 

The data-driven marketing company provides tools like Scout which allow marketers to search LinkedIn for prospects and show contact information from a database of 30 million users alongside enhancement services such as filters for selected business data (revenue, number of employees) and customer target data (age, lifestyle, type of work, purchase history). 

Stirista also has a social media engagement database platform called SocialORE which crawls the web on a daily basis and claims it has information on 75 million Americans, 150 million international social media users, 75 million business-to-business, and 60 million business-to-consumer social handles. 

Stirista is not the only data-driven marketing solutions provider to successfully get funding in 2020 with Adverity raising $30m in mid-end of April 2020.

“We are bullish on Stirista’s unique and innovative data assets and potential for long-term growth,” said ​Deepak Sindwani, co-founder and Managing Partner ​at Wavecrest Growth Partners​. “We have looked broadly at the B2B and B2C marketing data space in the last 2 years, and Stirista’s technology assets, client roster, and team impressed us. We think they will continue to thrive, even in the current market conditions, as enterprise and mid-level market brands look to target and convert more effectively. We look forward to a long and productive partnership with Ajay and his team.”

Customers of the company include Oracle, Harvard Business Review, AoL, and weightwatchers as well as advertising agencies and companies in the IT, Retail, Political, Educational, and Healthcare sectors. 

Stirista claims to have developed AI-powered tools for internal use that can automate delivery of customer insights for the purpose of research and understanding audiences and trends – similar to Forbes’s AI-powered content management system called Bertie. 

Customers of the data-driven marketing platform can currently sort through data within the sets by using over 400 filters, segmenting not only by standard demographics but by advanced fields including investments, donations by causes, interests, job title, revenue, and political views to name a few. 

Industry veteran and investor ​Dennis Ainge​ added, “In my 30+ years of industry experience and the close relationship I’ve cultivated with Stirista, I’ve watched them come into their own by offering unique data insights and increase their market share by building partnerships with brands looking to accurately reach their targeted audiences. Given Stirista’s culture, authoritative data sets, and unique industry solutions, I see another potential TARGUSinfo in the making. With the recent onboarding of highly experienced industry sales leaders, such as my former colleague, Brian Wool, as Chief Revenue Officer, I’m confident that Stirista will continue leveraging its strengths as it moves towards an ambitious future helping its clients solve their most difficult marketing challenges.”