AXA Strategic Ventures announces its first investment of USD 1M in Evercontact, the cloud service that extracts contact information in emails and shares and updates them automatically
April 8, 2015
published at 2:00 AM CEST
- AXA Strategic Ventures will make its first investment of USD 1 million in Evercontact, the cloud service that extracts contact information in emails, allows them to be shared with collaborators and keeps CRMs and address books automatically up to date.
- This new funding will enable the startup to expand its product line, further develop its expertise and accelerate its international growth, specifically with the launch of a US-based subsidiary.
Already adopted by over 100,000 users, Evercontact is the only fully automated cloud service that accurately and effortlessly finds and updates contact information otherwise left unused in email (Gmail, Google for Work, Outlook, Office 365) by identifying, extracting and then comparing the information in email signatures to a person or company's contact database. The value is clear for a professional's individual use or even more importantly as a collaborative tool to share contact info in a team's address book or leads and accounts within a CRM platform (Salesforce, Dynamics, Highrise or Zoho). Thus far, the company has analyzed over 1 billion emails and created and updated more than 300 million user contacts. To provide its service, Evercontact, an innovative French Tech startup & AXA-supported initiative, specializes in linguistic technology using a "Big Data" approach.
Minh Q. Tran
General Partner of AXA Strategic Ventures and Managing Partner of AXA Factory
Evercontact came to our attention with its entrance into the Smart Data for Customer Intelligence incubator program launched by AXA Global Direct and Paris & Co last December. Contact management is obviously a major issue for insurance companies, especially when optimizing their sales relationships. (...) Additionally, investing in technology related to Big Data is one of our priorities and Evercontact, as an innovator in this market, has a potential for international expansion that influenced our decision to provide support for its growth. Evercontact is the first startup to benefit from AXA Factory accelerator program.
AXA Strategic Ventures & Evercontact: breakthrough acceleration in the US market
This investment by AXA Strategic Ventures demonstrates its commitment to harnessing technological disruption for the benefit of AXA Group companies. Complementing internal efforts to improve customer experience by co-opting new approaches, technologies and business models developed by young innovative companies can only lead to stronger results. Accordingly, Evercontact will be the first company to benefit from the AXA Factory accelerator, a mentoring program that helps drive the growth of insurance and financial technology startups in France.
International expansion and presence in San Francisco
This round will allow Evercontact to finance its technical and commercial development with the goal of boosting its international presence, particularly in the United States, a crucial market which already accounts for 80% of the company's revenues. The startup aims to substantially increase sales in the coming months, and to maximize American business by opening an office in San Francisco in Q3 2015, preparing the groundwork through the UBI i/o immersion program in Q2. A Business France and BPI France initiative, UBI i/o provides eight French startups the opportunity to launch or intensify their activity in the United States with a ten-week residency in San Francisco. Currently located in Paris, Evercontact has ten employees and will double that by the end of the year.
Philippe Laval
CEO of Evercontact
Our first capital injection in 2012 allowed us to validate and structure our offer. This second round of financing comes at a time when Evercontact is more established. The funds will enable us to shift into high gear, and particularly to expand our reach in the worldwide marketplace. (...) Our service is already successful with US-based companies but our continued growth there requires a local presence, made possible by this support from AXA Strategic Ventures.
About AXA Strategic Ventures
Launched in February 2015, AXA Strategic Ventures is a €200M venture capital fund dedicated to emerging strategic innovations in insurance and financial services, to provide customer-focused solutions. AXA Strategic Ventures invests in startups via seed funding and also provides venture capital for more established companies. Active globally, the fund currently has six offices: San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, Zurich and Berlin, with a presence in Asia coming in 2015.
About Evercontact
Evercontact is a cloud service that discovers missing contacts in emails, allows them to be shared with collaborators and keeps CRMs and address books automatically up to date without any effort. So far, the company has analyzed over 1 billion emails and created and updated more than 300 million user contacts. By automating the tedious and often neglected task of creating, sharing and updating contacts Evercontact has saved its clients over one million hours of work.
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