[EN] ARMIS raises €6Million in Series A to become a SaaS digital platform
Elaia Partners joins this second financing round alongside Iris Capital and historical investors.
Founded less than 2 years ago, ARMIS aims at consolidating its leadership in France and deploying its Multilocal Advertising technology in SaaS.
Just 18 months after its launch, ARMIS announces the closing of a €6 million Series A funding. In January 2017, the company raised €1 million from its historical investor Iris Capital and Business Angels including the family office Sonorfi, Brian O’Kelley (Cofounder & CEO, AppNexus), Michael Rubenstein (President, AppNexus) and Philippe Finkelstein (Cofounder, Altavia). The Venture Capital fund Elaia Partners, which has invested in many successful startups including the French unicorn Criteo, is joining this round.
ARMIS was created relying on a unique mix of expertise in technology and retail coming from David Baranes, former Vice-President Market Development at AppNexus -the world’s largest independent advertising technology company, and Dan Gomplewicz, former Director of Strategy & Innovation at E.Leclerc, France’s largest retailer.
“We have reached many key milestones in a short timeframe. Hence we need now new investments to accelerate our commercial growth and continue our technology development. We are very pleased to see another high-profile investor with deep expertise in advertising, technology and retail joining our existing shareholders” said David Baranes and David Gomplewicz, ARMIS co-founders.
Building a leading RetailTech SaaS platform
Armis was founded in June 2016 after a full year spent in R&D in close collaboration with retailers and is now exponentially growing. Its cutting-edge Multilocal Advertising technology, focused on shops, combines geolocation, programmatic buying and Artificial Intelligence. It allows stores to initiate online conversations with their local customers leveraging in-store commercial operations and therefore compete efficiently with e-commerce players such as Amazon. ARMIS brings retailers the missing part in advertising: a way for their key asset — their stores — to engage with online audiences nearby.
This new funding will support the company’s latest development: offering its activity through a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform that will allow its clients and their partners to access to an optimized integration of the ARMIS technology for the marketing campaigns. It will provide a better autonomy and a higher level of customization when activating Multilocal Advertising campaigns.
ARMIS also aims at consolidating its leadership on the French market. The company already works with leading food retailers (Carrefour, E.Leclerc, Intermarché..), non-food retailers (Norauto, Fnac Darty, Leroy Merlin…), and now looks at new verticals such as fashion, toys or sport.
Xavier Lazarus, Partner at Elaia, also joins ARMIS’ Board as part of the investment deal.
“ARMIS was truly a love at first sight investment: a colossal market that is massively off-line, a cutting-edge technology and a visionary and experienced team, who has a unique expertise in technology and retail market dynamics. We are proud to be part of this adventure. I’m pleased to join the company as Board Member and support the company in this new phase” commented Xavier Lazarus, Partner at Elaia.
“We’ve followed ARMIS closely since their very first funding. Dan and David gathered a very talented team, quickly developed a unique technology asset and won promising contracts with French industry leaders. They address a real need for retailers so we obviously keep going with them” said Julien-David Nitlech, Partner at Iris Capital.
Based in Paris, ARMIS’ team doubled in 2017 (20+ people today) and looks for a similar growth in 2018.
About ARMIS
ARMIS has developed a SaaS platform which enables physical retailers to use local advertising at scale. The platform allows shops to grow in-store traffic by engaging their local customers on digital media and to competeefficiently with the web’s pure-players like Amazon by leveraging their most powerful assets: their commercial operations, their brands and their physical stores. ARMIS platform combines tools for marketing operations and a disrupting advertising technology called “Multilocal Advertising” which leans on geolocation, programmatic buyingand Artificial Intelligence.
Based in Paris, ARMIS was created relying on a unique mix of expertise in technology and retail coming from DavidBaranes, former Vice-President Market Development at AppNexus -the world’s largest independent advertising technology company, and Dan Gomplewicz, former Director of Strategy & Innovation at E.Leclerc, France’s largest retailer. https://armis.tech/
Originally published on March 6, 2018.
