Veylinx bags £1.4M, develops behavioural insights platform for businesses to propel innovation – UKTN (UK Tech News)
Veylinx, the first and only behavioural insights platform that uses skin-in-the-game to predict consumer purchase behaviour, announces to have raised $2 million (£1.43 million) in a pre-Series A investment led by venture capital firm Dutch Founders Fund.
Advancing Veylinx’s vision of understanding people’s real wants and needs, the funding will enable the Dutch company to expand and grow teams across Europe and the US, accelerate product development and launch a new platform – “Veylinx Platform” – that will enable their customers to obtain unique and actionable behavioural insights on products and services, more reliably and faster than ever.
Veylinx eschews standard market research methods, as these often depend on what people say they will do hypothetically, which is known to be biased and does not instil the trust necessary to make impactful business decisions. Veylinx solves this problem – realizing that people ‘speak’ most truthfully with their wallets – by obtaining realistic consumer insights to inform decision-making on the development of new and existing products and services.
The consequences of businesses using unreliable consumer data and misrepresented market research are manifold and lead to failed product launches and even complete business failure. That is what makes Veylinx stand out from conventional methods – they provide genuine insights into real consumer behaviour, helping customers mitigate product failure risks and identify business opportunities with confidence.
Strong presence in the UK
“Hypothetical biases found in traditional market research methods can be a plague on businesses, costing them millions of dollars. This is why I founded Veylinx, to empower businesses to truly understand their consumers’ wants and needs and make more intelligent product decisions,” said Anouar El Haji, Founder and CEO of Veylinx. “This investment allows us to expand and release the first genuine behavioural insights platform. Our unique show-me-the-money approach to consumer insights in combination with a scalable platform enables our customers to make the right product decisions faster and with more certainty.”
“Starting with our key clients, Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser, that already have a strong UK presence, we plan to accelerate our expansion in this region as companies are adapting to a post-Brexit consumer environment. Our insights provide the clarity that UK businesses need to navigate confidently in this new situation.” Anouar El Haji, Founder and CEO of Veylinx
The investment round is backed by Dutch Founders Fund investors Hidde Hoogcarspel, Laurens Groenendijk, and Patrick Kerssemakers, serial entrepreneur Saeed Younesi, Recruitee COO Robbert Flipsen, former CEO of Nielsen Mitch Barns, as well as all existing shareholders and the leadership team, including Veylinx CEO Anouar El Haji, CCO Hein Willemse, and CTO Adil Naimi.
“We’re excited to see Veylinx’s surge in traction, turning blue-chip conglomerates into loyal customers. Proving they found a product-market fit at scale, made possible by a stellar team,” said Laurens Groenendijk of the Dutch Founders Fund. “We have a firm belief in Anouar’s vision and are eager to help shape its platform.”
Mitch Barns, former CEO of Nielsen says “In recent years, innovation in market research has been focused on tech. Then along comes Veylinx, with a truly unique and powerful new research method that focuses on the most fundamental question of product demand.” “Veylinx’s method is uniquely effective in answering the most important product development decisions: product, positioning, and price. And nothing is more important for a new product than knowing whether there is sufficient demand and getting the price right. No one has a better way to do it. The world needs more Veylinx.”
In the last two years alone, thirty Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) customers, primarily Fortune 500 companies, have undergone multiple projects in more than twenty countries with Veylinx. Now, leading global brands such as Procter & Gamble Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, and Reckitt Benckiser, trust the realistic and discerning consumer insights that Veylinx’s platform provides.
The funding round will enable Veylinx to further expand its unconventional approach across Europe and the US, and lead the evolution in how businesses approach their market research, shifting away from the hypothetical intentions based on what people say to the concrete measurement of consumers’ real purchase intent.
Veylinx has its root as an academic project at the University of Amsterdam, where Founder and CEO Anouar El Haji, obtained his PhD in Marketing. Since December 2015 Veylinx has been disrupting the world of market research supporting mostly Fortune 500 companies such as Procter & Gamble and Unilever to guide them on major decisions on product developments and initiatives. Besides the fact that Veylinx continues to be applied by academic researchers, Veylinx won a number of industry awards among which the IIeX Insights Innovation Award for its paradigm-shifting approach.
— Press release