Travel data science specialist Boxever company has announced a Series B round to the tune of $12m.
The funding was led by Polaris Partners, an existing investor in the Dublin-based data analytics and personalisation company, having led a $6m round in 2014.
Boxever has seen considerable traction for its ‘Customer Intelligence Cloud’ in recent months bringing airlines including Emirates, Cebu Pacific and Alitalia on board.
Chief executive and co-founder Dave O’Flanagan says the company now has “a strong proposition”for both low cost and traditional carriers and has also started working with a small number of hotels in Ireland and the UK.
All the companies are working with Boxever’s customer intelligence platform but using it in different ways, such as for loyalty, targeting or personalisation campaigns, and across various distribution channels.
O’Flanagan says that while many airlines are becoming effective online retailers they lack analytics capabilities.
“Most realise they can’t leverage their data to make smart retail decisions. Very few have true customer insights or ways to use it consistently. The ecosystem is evolving but what is missing is a centralised repository of customer data.”
This year, he believes, airlines will join the rapid testing and learning approach adopted by existing travel companies and startups and begin to act in a more agile manner.
Boxever plans to enlarge its team to better serve customers across all time zones and will recruit for roles in sales, customer support, product and engineering.
He acknowledges the challenges of recruiting in Dublin however where the company not only competes with other travel companies but giants such as Google and Facebook.
The platform will also be further developed to put more power in the hands of customers’ in-house data scientists by providing them with the infrastructure to do their own analytics.
Frontline Ventures also participated in the current round which brings total investment in Boxever to $22m.
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