- Contextual data intelligence company Flybits announced recently that it raised $35 million in Series C funding
Flybits is a contextual data intelligence company that recently announced it raised $35 million in Series C funding led by Point72 Ventures with participation from Mastercard, Citi Ventures, and Reinventure (backed by Westpac Banking Corporation in Australia) along with existing partners Portag3 Ventures, TD Bank Group, and Information Venture Partners.
What does Flybits do? Flybits transforms disparate data into a cohesive ecosystem with real-time insights. And the technology assembles a bank’s proprietary customer data (bank account activities and time as a customer) with machine learning and external contextual data (propensity to consume and risk profiles) to deliver relevant and timely recommendations to customers. This is all done while upholding the strictest standards of privacy protection.
Including the Series C round of funding, Flybits has raised a total of $50 million. The new investment will be used for expanding the teams in EMEA, LATAM, and the US. Gerti Dervishi — the co-founder of Flybits — is overseeing the scaling of Flybits’ New York office. And the funding will also be used for commercializing Flybits’ portfolio of AI and machine learning patents and enhancing user experience and design.
“Banks are looking for ways to maximize their use of data and better engage with customers, but are having a hard time executing and scaling this on their own or by leveraging passive PFM (Personal Finance Management) services,” said Flybits founder and CEO Dr. Hossein Rahnama. “Flybits enables banks to use real-time data and contextual intelligence to shift to those new models and go to market with them faster without over-reliance on their IT department. We were looking for investors who share this vision with us and could become a catalyst in our global growth, and that is what we have found.”
And Flybits is developing a marketplace that facilitates partnerships between large banks, fintechs, and other data providers in the creation of new services. Other providers are not equipped for addressing these challenges. And legacy SaaS companies sell one-size-fits-all approaches with frozen sets of use cases. Plus conventional players within the financial sector are narrowly focused on point solutions like chatbots and smart PFMs that rely solely on data pattern matching and can’t scale.
“We believe that banks and other financial institutions are struggling to communicate with their customers about their products and services in the digital environment, and Flybits is the best technology to help,” added Point72 Ventures partner Tripp Shriner. “Flybits has built a superior end-to-end solution for personalization of the digital customer experience in financial services and we are pleased to partner with them and support their future growth.”
Just Flybits brings a bank’s data sources together with new contextual data for a complete view of their customers thus taking the onus off of IT departments and empowering non-technical teams to design and deliver hyper-personalized and predictive customer experiences.
“Personalization is mission-critical for all D2C businesses in the digital age. Flybits’ integrated platform allows financial services firms to offer contextualized experiences, driving product awareness and adding significant value to the lives of their customers,” explained Ramneek Gupta — Managing Director and Co-Head of Venture Investing at Citi Ventures. “We look forward to partnering with Flybits in its next phase of growth as it continues to set the bar for hyper-personalized customer experiences.”
“Mastercard and Flybits share a vision on using data-driven insights to enrich consumers’ experiences,” commented Francis Hondal — President of Loyalty & Engagement at Mastercard. “Our ultimate goal is to develop products and services that engage consumers in a highly contextual manner. Through this collaboration with Flybits, we’ll be able to offer rich, personalized experiences for them throughout their journeys.”
Contextual and relevant AI is helping other Flybits customers achieve results too. For example, one major North American bank saw a 43% increase in user engagement after implementing Flybits while a major Latin America bank achieved a 164% increase in offer redemptions using Flybits.
“What excited us about Flybits was the ability to transform a transactional banking app into a wider lifestyle engagement tool for customers,” noted Rohen Sood of Reinventure Group. “Flybits allows the orchestration of multiple data sets and assets to deliver a personalized experience to the end-user that goes beyond banking. We believe Flybits is shaping the future of banking across the world and we are thrilled to be supporting them in that journey.”
Flybits VP of marketing and communications Justine Melman also pointed out that the company saw 300% growth in the last year alone. And in 2019, the company is going to continue hiring across teams and offices including solutions engineers, sales executives, business development reps, and engineers.
