We are excited to announce that our portfolio Company Cognism has closed a £2 M funding round, lead by South Central Ventures, alongside Newable Private Investing, the London Co-Investment Fund, Start-up Funding Club and individual investors.
The company, founded by entrepreneur James Isilay and Stjepan Buljat, helps companies accelerate sales and recruitment leads using big data. Since its founding in 2016, Cognism has grown to over 80 paying customers in Europe and America, increased its headcount from 5 to 30 and extended its technology to become native in Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, becoming a leading name in European Sales Intelligence.
South Central Ventures has been supporting Cognism’s growth since its seed round in early 2017. As the lead investor in this current round, South Central Ventures is investing additional £1.5 M, which the company will use to accelerate its growth, opening new offices in the United States, alongside its development base in Macedonia, and to meet its plans to double the company’s salesforce in UK and Macedonia over the next year.
James Isilay, CEO, Cognism – a graduate of Imperial College London and former UBS trader – said:
“This funding is a testament to the team’s hard work and passion. This latest round is central to our strategy of providing the best technology in sales intelligence not only to improve prospecting performance but also to meet a new standard in GDPR compliant contact data with a strong focus on EU and North American contact and context data. The funding will be used to expand our data research, technology and sales teams in Macedonia and the UK. We couldn’t have achieved this without the support of South Central Ventures“
Tatjana Zabasu, Managing Partner, South Central Ventures added:
“It is always exciting to see the companies one invests is growing and developing at the speed the Cognism is achieving. The company’s revenue growth and the benefits it brings to its clients using advanced machine learning algorithms and AI are simply remarkable.
South Central Ventures are excited to be able to work with Cognism’s great team and to further support the company’s growth. ”
About Cognism
Cognism combines company, people and event data in real-time – so sales and marketing can secure and action businesses to business leads when they are most likely to buy. To do so, Cognism’s products use algorithmic technologies, natural language processing and machine learning.