Named an industry leader by Forrester, Gartner, IDC, and G2, B2B SaaS Unicorn Insider helps 1000+ leading brands like L’Oreal, Virgin, Samsung, Estée Lauder, IKEA, Santander, and GAP accelerate digital growth through best-in-class cross-channel customer experiences.

Insider, a leader in personalised, cross-channel customer experiences, today announced a $121 million Series D round led by QIA, at a $1.22 billion valuation. Other investors participating in the round include Sequoia, Riverwood Capital, 212, Wamda Capital, Esas Private Equity, and Endeavor Catalyst.

Early predictions indicate that in the UK, Insider will invest £40 million over the next three years. The additional capital will be used to fuel rapid expansion, enhance the company’s core technology and scale local sales and marketing investments. Insider has aggressive global hiring plans and anticipates creating more than 100 over the next three years, with an emphasis on hiring female engineers to fill R&D and product development positions.

In the UK, Insider has seen phenomenal growth since entering the market 3 years ago. The company recently relocated to new premises on 77 New Cavendish Street to accommodate the growing sales, marketing, and customer success teams necessary to manage relationships and support a growing number of UK clients.

Today, the company serves some of the most recognisable brands in the UK, including L’Oreal, Virgin, Samsung, Estée Lauder, IKEA, Santander, and GAP.

“With a meaningful strategic vision and a robust product roadmap, Insider is seeing an increasing number of the world’s leading brands and retailers looking to come on board. We are seeing huge interest from marketing and ecommerce teams looking to consolidate and simplify their tech stack while embracing emerging messaging and mobile channels, like WhatsApp, into their customer experience,” said Matt Markham, UK Country Manager. “It is an incredibly exciting time to come join – both as a client and as a member of the team.”

On average, today’s consumers engage with brands across six or more channels. Marketers are challenged with engaging with customers on their preferred channels when they are most active. Insider’s AI-powered platform brings together the most extensive set of personalisation capabilities with emerging messaging channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, RCS, and SMS.

Insider technology coordinates all offline and online data into a unified platform that allows enterprise marketers to:

• connect customer data across channels and systems to reveal interests and preferred touchpoints
• predict future behaviour with an AI-powered intent engine, such as which customer segments are likely to convert, buy, and churn
• orchestrate and deliver personalised, optimised experiences to customers.

Insider’s channel integrations take minutes, not months, reducing dependency on internal IT teams. The platform enables digital marketers to drive growth across channels and throughout the funnel from acquisition to activation, revenue, and retention (AARR), thereby impacting ROI metrics such as conversion rate, CAC, LTV, and average order value.

With this funding milestone, the company became one of a few female-led SaaS unicorns in the world. Insider has achieved consistent, rapid growth and according to Crunchbase is one of the top 9 B2B SaaS unicorns globally: the fifth largest B2B SaaS unicorn in the U.S., fourth in Europe, second in Asia, and first in Latin America. 

“We’ve been blitzscaling remarkably in the past three years and achieved 3X growth. In the same period, our global team grew by 300%, and our customer base continues to grow,” said founder and CEO Hande Cilingir: “Following our aggressive expansion in Asia, Europe and LATAM, we’ll carry this momentum in the U.S. market. We are a trusted software partner to leading global brands like Samsung, GAP, MAC, and Santander. We are laser-focused on bringing Insider to additional markets, and becoming the number choice for every marketer on this planet.”

Mr. Mansoor bin Ebrahim Al-Mahmoud, CEO of QIA, said:

“QIA is constantly looking for innovators, both in the MENA region and globally, in line with our increasing focus on the tech space. Insider clearly stands out in the marketing technology ecosystem, and its highly personalised results can provide value to both audiences and businesses.”

Pieter Kemps, Principal Sequoia Capital, said: “What we see in Sequoia is that companies that delight their customers are the ones that win. And, Insider is doing just that: using next-level personalisation to help brands delight their customers. Without a doubt, this is the future of CX.”

Founded in 2012 by Cilingir (Chief Executive Officer), Serhat Soyuerel (Chief Revenue Officer), Arda Koterin (Chief Customer Officer), Sinan Toktay (Chief Technology Officer), Okan Yedibela (VP of Engineering), and Muharrem Derinkök (Chief Product Officer), Insider now has more than 700 team members representing 41 different nationalities across 28 countries worldwide. Insider is a woman-led organisation with 60% of top executives in the company, including the CEO, CMO, CFO, and CHRO, being women.

Hande Cilingir was named as one of the top women CEOs outside of the US by Crunchbase. The market-leading MarTech platform is trusted by one-third of the Fortune Global 500 and half of Dow Jones Global Titans 50. Insider was named Leader in The Forrester Wave for Cross-Channel Campaign Management 2021 and Gartner Magic Quadrant for Personalisation Engines 2021. 

The company has been named #1 Leader on G2’s Mobile Marketing Software and Personalisation Grids with a 4.6/5 rating for 20 consecutive quarters.

Joe De Pinho, Principal at Riverwood Capital, said: “The bar for competition has been raised across the board in SaaS over the past 5 years. Insider stands out as an outlier. Hande is a truly exceptional leader and, backed by her brilliant co-founders and teams, is building a world-class software company with capabilities beyond those of many in Silicon Valley. Theirs is a different mindset: one that breaks past boundaries and makes what seems impossible to many, a possibility.”