Zuora, a California-headquartered, cloud-based subscription management platform provider, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired London-based Zephr, a subscription experience platform.
As per the agreement, Zuora will acquire Zephr for $44M (approximately €43.9M) in cash payable at close, plus an earnout of up to $6M (approximately €5.9M), subject to certain financial objectives.
Aim of the acquisition
The US company expects the acquisition to contribute $5M (approximately €4.9M) to its annual recurring revenue.
Upon closing the deal, Zephr will become a part of Zuora’s existing product suite, alongside Zuora Billing, Zuora Revenue, and Zuora Collect. All of Zephr’s employees will join Zuora.
For companies that are in the subscription economy, being able to launch and experiment with new digital services quickly is extremely important.
According to research by Zuora’s Subscribed Institute, media companies growing the fastest iterate their pricing and packaging twice as often as other companies in their industry growing more slowly.
However, most companies are bogged down by static, outdated systems, which slows down their ability to respond to changing subscriber expectations.
Adding Zephr to Zuora’s product suite will give companies the agility they need to meet these ever-changing demands and ultimately driving subscriber conversion, retention, and growth.
Zephr: What you need to know
Founded in 2018 by James Henderson and Chris Scott, Zephr has developed a solution that enables publishers to monetise their digital users through subscription products tailored to each individual. The technology identifies the user’s digital behaviour and processes this through a dynamic paywall.
The company claims to power nearly 8B requests a month, with capabilities including identity management, intelligent trials, dynamic paywalls, entitlements management, and a decision engine that helps deliver experiences that are personalised for every subscriber.
“Our focus has been on giving our customers the agility they need to deliver the experiences that modern customers expect – it starts from the first digital interaction to conversion, to renewal,” says James Henderson, CEO at Zephr. “It was a clear decision to join Zuora to accelerate where our platform is headed and empower all our customers to nurture and monetise their subscriber relationships.”
Zuora: What you need to know
Based out of Redwood City, California, Zuora provides cloud-based software via subscription that enables any company in any industry to launch, manage, and transform into a subscription business.
Zuora’s platform is built to handle business models that charge subscription fees regularly. It helps manage and automate the entire process from quoting to revenue recognition.
The US company serves more than 1,000 companies around the world, including Box, Ford, Penske Media Corporation, Schneider Electric, Siemens, Xplornet, and Zoom.
“The winners in the media industry are those continuously innovating around new services, bundles, and offers. And where the media industry goes, other industries will follow,” says Tien Tzuo, CEO and Founder of Zuora. “This is what combining Zuora and Zephr is about. We’re thrilled to welcome our fellow ZEOs into the family.”
