Partech Ventures and Alven Capital have led a $13m Series B round for French-American startup Akeneo, a provider of open-source product information management software.
Akeneo, founded in France in 2013 and backed by Alven in 2014, has created a collaborative open source platform to optimise product information management. PIM (product information management) has been likened to customer-relation management (CRM) for products: it brings together detailed, high-quality data about products across sales channels, helping manufacturers and e-commerce companies better manage and market products, improve conversion rates, enhance SEO, and improve productivity. The Akeneo PIM solution also makes it possible to scale and customise e-commerce initiatives far more rapidly.
Akeneo plans to use the new funding to double its team, from R&D to sales, and to accelerate its international development. With 60% of its turnover coming from abroad, Akeneo already opened offices in Boston and DĂĽsseldorf in 2016 and is talking of an imminent opening in London. The United Kingdom is a priority market for the software company, especially for being a world leader in e-commerce with one of the largest and fastest growing online economies.