Zebit, the first end-to-end big data platform for financial transactions, has just closed a $25 million series D round of funding.
Parent company Global Analytics Holdings, Inc. will use the investment led by Mohr Davidow Ventures to fund Zebit's innovative platform-as-a-service in the financial sector as well as the growth of its micro-lending business. Mohr Davidow joins Crosslink Capital, Leapfrog Ventures, QED Investors, and a number of private strategic advisors in fueling the global growth of the Zebit brand.
"Zebit fits right in with one of our major themes around big data, analytics-driven insights and execution to disrupt and/or create major markets," said Bryan Stolle, General Partner at Mohr Davidow. "We know the platform works. Their initial launch market in the UK is a profitable $50+ million business. We think this is an exceptional team chasing a very big opportunity, and we're thrilled to be a strategic partner in this venture."
The Zebit platform is the first of its kind that supports the challenging micro-lending businesses from start to finish. That means that companies, such as online retailers, who want to do business with customers with low access to credit can do so in a single, customizable platform. The secret?
"Adaptive Data Fusion," said Michael Thiemann, CEO. "This is a science that has been used traditionally in military and wireless sensor applications - taking big, complex streams of data from multiple sources and transforming them into actionable inferences that are superior to using the data streams individually. We've applied this to Zebit, the first platform that performs underwriting on a per-transaction basis - because each customer transaction is inherently different, involving a unique purchase, unique variables and a distinct point in time - the holy grail of risk management."
"Competitors do their underwriting based solely on the individual. In our UK micro-lending launch market, we found that with Adaptive Data Fusion we achieved better, more accurate risk assessments which allowed us to identify responsible customers and pass savings along to them," says Thiemann. "Our platform-as-a-service offering allows our partners to enter new markets quickly and make them profitable faster. Our platform gets smarter and more experienced with new data, regenerating itself with new models in real-time."