We’ve talked recently about the importance of personalisation in startups’ success, but nowhere is it more imperative than in the field of retail marketing. The new wave of customer insight and marketing platform companies is taking personalisation to the next level. It’s an art and a science and Ometria is, in our opinion, the most exciting exponent of this tech-enabled phenomenon.

According to Deloitte, Ometria is the UK’s 9th fastest growing company, and the company just won the Techcrunch Europas MadTech Award, so what is fuelling this heat? The founders’ conviction comes from identifying a failure in retailers’ ability to provide the near-perfect personalised experiences shoppers now expect. Traditional marketing techniques just don’t cut it anymore. They offer little personalisation or relevance to people’s interests or shopping habits. In this new ‘relationship economy’, retailers that continue to use outdated ESP (email service providers) technologies – built to deliver the same generic message to a list of many – stand to lose badly. Ometria’s magic is its ability to mobilise real-time artificial intelligence, aggregating data from multiple sources, to create individually-tailored experiences based on each shopper’s tastes, behaviours and preferences.

We couldn’t ignore Ometria when we realised that all of our retail and ecommerce investments had started using the platform to power their customer marketing. Co-founder and CEO, Ivan Mazour has attracted, retained and is growing a spectacular team. Many founding teams buckle under the strain of the hard changes that fast growth demands, but Ometria’s team has remained intact. This speaks to the companies’ powerful combination of mission and ambition coupled with a refreshing attitude of curiosity and humility. Probing, challenging questions are always part of the fund-raising process but ours were welcomed with enthusiasm rather than cagey defence.

Ometria’s focus now lies across the Atlantic, where US incumbents present an exciting, if daunting, challenge. Djalal Lougouev, CPO, is leading that charge from New York, where our team on the ground is helping sharpen up the go-to-market strategy as they establish a beach head there. Meanwhile, back home in Shoreditch, London, the team are investing in the tech function and engineering talent to further enrich the product offering.

There’s plenty of work to do, but we look forward to an exciting future along with our co-investors, Sonae IM, Summit Action, Samos and Adjuvo.