Berlin-based Latana, an AI-powered brand tracking and consumer insights platform, announced on Thursday that it has raised €36M in a Series B equity and debt round of funding. The round was led by Oxx, a specialist growth-stage SaaS investor, with participation from Balderton Capital and Kreos.
Mikael Johnsson, General Partner of Oxx and Latana board member, says, “With digital now dominating marketing spending, performance marketing and other data-driven tools and techniques have empowered marketeers to make faster and better decisions. However, companies still spend typically 40-60 per cent of their marketing budget on brand marketing, largely driven by gut feel and best efforts. Powered by novel sampling methods and advanced statistical processing techniques, Latana is disrupting this paradigm by providing brand marketers with accurate, timely and affordable brand marketing data.”
Capital utilisation
Latana claims it will use the proceeds to scale its SaaS offering, which provides companies with consumer data and key insights to help track brand and campaign performance. The company will also scale its marketing and sales operations, grow its consumer-facing product teams, and expand its product offering through R&D.
Latana CEO, Nico Jaspers, says “Latana provides a direct channel to consumers that helps brands understand exactly what its key audiences are thinking. With its advanced survey technology, and intuitive data-driven dashboard, Latana provides brand marketers with numbers, and a clear view of campaign success and audience perception. We’re excited to have strong partners on board to scale our software and client base. This investment now enables us to fully focus on developing the next generation of brand analytics and consumer insights.”
The Latana story
Founded in 2013, founders Nico Jaspers and Fernando Guillén noticed a shift in human behaviour: more and more people were easily reachable via their smartphones. They came to the conclusion that this common practice may provide market research prospects that, in terms of range and efficiency, are significantly superior to those offered by conventional techniques. As a result, Dalia Research, the parent company of Latana, was born.
In 2019, the founders determined that there is a critical requirement for businesses to understand their brand impression. “What does my target audience think of my brand?” can now be answered by brand managers thanks to Jaspers and Guillén, who used Dalia’s ability to generate over 1 billion replies per month across 150 countries.
Latana now provides answers to these queries for some of the most well-known brands in the world, enabling businesses to acquire the trustworthy information they require to develop.
Latana is a brand tracking software that gives customers access to crucial brand analytics for both themselves and their rivals. It also helps users to focus on the audiences and purchase drivers that will support their expansion.
Using various combinations of geography, time period, KPIs, brands, and audience segments, users can customise their dashboards to fit their needs. And with all the data available on one dashboard, users can access brand insights, prepare reports, and run ad hoc research as well. Also, with access to highly granular data, users will be able to understand how niche audiences perceive their brand — something that sets Latana apart from the competition, says the company.
Latana also uses its technology to understand the underlying forces behind the opinions of people worldwide with special initiatives including the Democracy Perception Index, which is the largest annual study on the global perception of democracies.
Recently, Latana sold part of its original API technology (through Dalia Research) to market research firm PureSpectrum, and is now focusing on scaling its B2B SaaS brand tracking platform. This takes Latana from focusing on both platform API clients and consumer businesses to a solid direction in the B2B SaaS arena servicing consumer companies.
