- Quini, a leader in sensory real-time data, analytics, and technology solutions for the wine industry, announced it completed a minority funding round led by OKR Financial
Quini — a leader in sensory real-time data, analytics, and technology solutions for the wine industry — announced it completed a minority funding round led by OKR Financial. This round of funding will be used for supporting operations and helping the company advance its artificial intelligence development program and expand the company’s sales organization.
The OKR Financial investment was supported by a syndicate of private investors along with company’s co-founders — who chose to increase their support for the company. And the funding round also included Convertible Debenture and equity placements. Other financial details were undisclosed.
The funds raised from this round will enable Quini to accelerate the development of its artificial intelligence-based wine recommendations engine and it will be used to expand its sales organization to support the wine industry’s growing interest in consumer sensory data to enable more informed decisions across business functions, including marketing and brand management, logistics, product innovation, and winemaking.
“This funding round will enable us to augment our artificial intelligence-based innovations around Quini’s proprietary consumer sensory data, and grow our sales organization, as interest for our solutions rises among some of the largest wine producers and retailers,” said Quini CEO Roger Noujeim. “I welcome all our new investors to Quini, including OKR Financial, a true leader in funding solutions for technology companies. I am proud that they share our excitement for Quini’s vision and future.”
Launched in late 2012, Quini is known for running the world’s first visual wine tasting and rating application. The project was first co-founded by Canada Media Fund (CMF). And Quini’s unique application for capturing deep and rich sensory and attitudinal data has since released its next-generation web-based app and QUINI API platform as well as the enterprise wine program and customer engagement automation platform called QUINI SOMM in 2017 and 2018.
This solution has revolutionized wine consumer engagement, sales support and staff training in the wine and hospitality sectors. A couple of years ago, Quini also introduced QUINI DATA, which is the industry’s first self-serve consumer sensory and attitudinal near real-time data and analytics solution used by large and small wine producers and retailers to solve critical business questions and make more informed marketing and product decisions. And the solution collapses the time and cost of consumer research thus making data-driven decision making accessible to wine companies of virtually any size.
“Quini has made solid investments in its technology and ideas, and created a business model that forever changed how wine producers and retailers can obtain and access consumer sensory data,” explained OKR Financial Managing Partner and co-founder Jason Neale. “With our investment in Quini, we can help advance the wine industry’s ability to compete more effectively and innovate with wines that delight the critically important, digitally hardwired millennial and Gen Z consumer groups on whose shoulders the wine industry will grow for decades.”
