There was a time when marketers used to focus on promoting their marketing campaigns through SEO rankings, by using all text and no focus on visuals. However, times have changed, as the old school strategies don’t work any longer.
Texts and words are no longer enough if you wish to engage with your audience. In recent times, it’s the visual elements that come in handy and make you stand out from the crowd. It might interest you to learn that around 65% of people are visual learners.
The global visual content market size is expected to reach $14750M (approx €12.48B) by 2026, from $6182.2M (approx €5.23B) in 2020, at a CAGR of 15.6% during 2021-2026.
Atwater acquires shares in Freepik
Atwater Capital, the private equity firm that focuses exclusively on the media and entertainment sectors, has acquired a minority stake in Freepik, a freemium provider of digital visual content.
Vania Schlogel, Managing Partner & founder of Atwater, has also been appointed to the Board of Freepik.
Freepik’s management team, including the co-founders, brothers Alejandro and Pablo Blanes, and their friend Joaquin Cuenca, will continue to lead Freepik.
About Freepik
Based in Malaga, Spain, Freepik was founded in 2010 and offers visual content and an online graphic design market through its freemium business model. Besides, the company also claims to be the largest freemium provider of digital visual content globally.
It offers high-quality content including illustrations, photos, icons, mockups, and presentations templates. The platform attracts over 32 million monthly visitors in over 200 markets, through over 10 million graphic resources.
Freepik operates under the Freepik, Flaticon, and SlidesGo brands and boasts a user base of more than 20 million registered users. It generated a revenue of €31M in 2019.
According to the company, Freepik’s underlying market is supported by fast-growing, digital-first industries, including game design, social media, and digital advertising.
Companies that use Freepik’s resources include, NASA, Amazon, Spotify, FedEx, and Microsoft among others.
Working alongside EQT
Atwater joins global investment firm EQT, which acquired a majority stake in Freepik earlier in July via its EQT Mid-Market Europe Fund.
EQT accelerated Freepik’s growth and invested in its proprietary content library, its UX, and tech platform, including AI and tool integration capabilities.
With this acquisition, Atwater will work alongside EQT and Freepik’s founders and management team to support the company’s growth and expansion in the Asian market, while providing extensive knowledge and experience in the media and digital content space.
Atwater Capital focuses exclusively on the media and entertainment sectors. Few of its portfolio companies include GfK (IT & services), MadRiver Pictures (movie and television production house), and Epidemicsound (provider of Royalty free music and sound effects) among others.
Image credit: Freepik