France-based Kiliba, an AI-driven marketing automation software, announced on Tuesday that it raised €7M in a Seed round of funding with an aim to become the European market leader.
Otium Capital, FrenchFounders and Bleu Capital participated in the round.
The round also saw participation from Alix de Sagazan and Rémi Aubert (AB Tasty founders), Nima Karimi (Silvr), alongside its three historical business Angels – Thibaud Hug de Larauze (Back Market), Geoffroy de Becdelièvre (Marco Vasco) and Bertrand Jelensperger (TheFork).
Brief about Kiliba
Founded in 2020 by Arnaud Becker and Amaury Hug de Larauze, Kiliba claims to be the first 100 per cent autonomous marketing automation module, from the creation of the email to its distribution, including the selection of promoted products. The company helps generate new leads and builds community engagement.
With Kiliba’s smart automation platform, digital firms can build, customise, and send marketing campaigns. The platform enables its clients to build highly configurable scenarios in minutes by automating scenarios and opening up a greater degree of detail.
Co-founder Amaury Hug de Larauze says, “Artificial Intelligence takes care of everything. Digital retailers just have to connect Kiliba with their CMS. We then generate email campaigns that integrate the company’s design identity and translate them into multiple languages. Emails are personalised using 22 scenarios tailored to the user’s profile, then sent at the best possible time, depending on the targeted audience. All of which takes only 10 minutes to set up!”
Kiliba claims to have expanded significantly after investing a year and a half in research and development to improve its algorithms. The company’s sales increased by 300 per cent over the previous 12 months and surpassed $1M ARR.
Improving campaign performances with smart targeting
Kiliba also assists retailers in increasing their income by employing AI-driven targeting to find the appropriate consumers at the right time. Compared to a 25 per cent industry average, the company says its platform’s average open rate is 52 per cent (and as high as 80 per cent with select clients)\. The ROI is 50 per cent higher than standards for conventional email marketing.
Co-founder Arnaud Becker says, “The volume of data available has become more and more extensive over the last ten years, making it difficult for advertisers to optimise their targeting. As a result, over 80 per cent of emails are left unread. Kiliba leverages CMS data and artificial intelligence to unlock precise and efficient targeting, tripling the opening rate. And recipients are more attentive and likely to be interested in the message.”
Smart targeting also enables advertisers to cut back on the number of emails sent to their customers. Additionally, email marketing’s carbon emissions are reduced by a third by lowering the number of emails sent.
Capital utilisation
Kiliba claims to have acquired more than 400 clients and increased its ARR from 0 to €1M in just 18 months. The company mentions in a statement that it is now in a disruptor position in the marketing automation field because of its phenomenal development. The startup wants to pioneer this $11B sector as the sole AI-native firm. By 2025, Kiliba hopes to capture 1 per cent of the European market, and 10 per cent by 2032.
The startup will concentrate its efforts on online merchants with yearly revenue of under $10M. After the funding, Kiliba says it will keep putting its emphasis on improving its technical infrastructure by introducing a new CMS to the platform. New data scientists and sales people will also join the team.
