Big Data For Humans Secures $1.2M Seed Funding For Data Science-As-A-Service

Big Data For Humans, the U.K. startup that offers a data science-as-a-service for the retail and travel sector, has picked up seed funding.

The Techstars London alumni has raised a $1.2 million round led by London’s EC1 Capital, with participation from Firestartr, Scottish Investment Bank, and various angel investors.

The company was previously backed by Techstars and Big Data For Humans founders, who include CEO Peter Ellen, who previously founded Maxymiser (sold to Oracle a few weeks ago) and Fopp (sold to HMV).

Meanwhile, today’s seed round will be used to scale the startup’s offering and to expand globally.

Launched in October 2014, Big Data For Humans’ data-science-as-a-service aims to help the retail and travel sector exploit big data to understand “who their customers are and what they want and identifies how to sell more to them every day.”

The draw is that by offering data science as a product, retailers can save money by negating the need to build their own in-house and expensive data science teams and infrastructure.

“Retail and travel companies lack scalable ways to manage their customer marketing. Their data science teams cost a fortune to run and they simply don’t scale across markets,” Ellen tells me.

“As a result they fail to monetize the customers, often wearing them out with expensive and pointless promotional messaging. But 80 per cent of revenue comes from 20 per cent of customers, so the problem needs to be fixed”.

To solve this, the startup’s data science platform “automates insights over billions of calculations, then generates action plans that work across channels,” he says. “Our clients run more profitable marketing that increases revenue and cuts costs.”

Big Data For Humans’ typical customers range from large multi-channel supermarkets to mid-sized ‘bricks & clicks’ retailers. The Glasgow and London-based company makes money by charging a subscription for its service.