Israeli startup Trax Image Recognition has raised $125 million in a financing round led by Boyu Capital, one of China's largest investment funds and UK media company DC Thomson. Some of the funds will be used to buy shares from previous investors. The company has raised $235 million to date. The investment was made at a company valuation of $850 million.
Founded in 2010 by CEO Joel Bar-El and chief commercial officer Dror Feldheim, Trax is headquartered in Singapore, with its development center in Tel Aviv. The company has over 175 customers in 50 countries and previous investors include Warburg Pincus, the company's largest shareholder, and Investec.
Trax provides in-store execution, market intelligence and data science solutions for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies and retailers by harnessing its cutting-edge computer vision platform to process photos taken in store and deliver granular store-level insights within minutes. It combines state-of-the-art fine grained recognition, machine learning and data collection methods to build a proprietary retail database and analytics products. With tens of billions of dollars spent on trade promotion, CPG companies and retailers are focused on their in-store execution and increasingly strategic with its planning to yield optimal results.
Bar-El said, "The injection of financing from Boyu will allow us to speed up the continued innovation of our technology in our computer vision center of excellence in Tel Aviv and check out the establishment of an additional engineering center in China."
Feldheim said, "We are crossing yet another inflection point in our global growth and our journey in driving the digital transformation of physical retail. The adoption of our solutions and services is moving at lightspeed in our core markets of the US, Europe , Asia and Latin America . Partnering with Boyu and having access to their vast network and deep expertise adds real firepower towards the realization of our vision."
Boyu Capital managing director Joey Chen said, "The investment in Trax is driven by our conviction in the compelling value proposition of new technology solutions that enable digitalization of brick and mortar retail. We are impressed by the wide recognition of Trax's cloud-based one-stop-shop solutions by the world's largest CPG companies and retailers. Compared to developed markets such as Europe and the US, the use of digital retail solutions by Chinese consumer goods companies and retailers is still in its early stages. And with the world's largest retail market and number of outlets, we see a promising future for Trax's development in China."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 1, 2018
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