Female co-founded tech company Antavo’s expansion into APAC follows the Enterprise Loyalty Cloud platform’s closing of $15M AUD Series A funding.
Now more than ever, customer retention is becoming the top priority for businesses as the world today faces a looming recession and new customer acquisition remains challenging.
Key industry reports have highlighted this shift including Fortune Business Insights, which stated that “the loyalty management market is forecast to be worth $24B by 2029 due to rising consumer demand for personalised solutions”, while similarly, Antavo’s Global Customer Loyalty Report 2022 found that 82% of businesses plan to double down on loyalty in the next three years.
Co-founded by entrepreneur and former award-winning journalist Zsusza Kecsmar, Antavo, focuses on rewarding customers for living in accordance with their interests. The platform enables brands to transition from the traditional, transactional, financial-only rewards programs towards programmes that fosters long-lasting loyalty and customer engagement outside of the buying cycle. For example, an activewear and outdoor equipment brand could issue reward points to customers when they complete hikes and climbs.
Unlocking the power of customer loyalty and retention
Antavo recently successfully closed its Series A round at $15mAUD led by Euroventures alongside Lead Ventures, iEurope and Innovation Nest and private investors including Zoltan Vardy, empowering the company to develop its best-in-class SaaS platform. The funding is set to enable the expansion of Antavo’s global presence and further development of the best-in-class, no-code loyalty technology for enterprises.
“Antavo saw incredible growth last year, which, along with the dynamic loyalty program landscape change, brought us to a rebrand as Enterprise Loyalty Cloud,” Kecsmar said. “This refreshed position better encompasses the company’s goal and the support of our investors in our Series A round means we can continue to develop a powerful, world-first SaaS loyalty product that encourages and nurtures lasting brand love through differentiation and unique lifestyle engagement.”
The new investment will also enable Antavo to continue reinvesting in its technology for greater omnichannel capabilities and superior integration with more apps and platforms, while expanding its global presence. In 2022, the company signed major global brand customers including BMW, KFC, Kathmandu and BrewDog, resulting in 3.2X year-on-year growth and a 3 fold increase in headcount.
Antavo’s expansion to the APAC region
Antavo, has now expanded into APAC, appointing seasoned business leader Caleb Gamble to lead regional growth. With leadership positions spanning Tyco Retail Solutions, Retailite and WingArc, Caleb spearheads Antavo’s growth across the APAC region. He also served for several years as an Advisory Board Member of the Australian Loyalty Association.
“Across the APAC region, we are seeing a significant shift in the way customers want to interact with brands and forge more meaningful relationships. What attracted me to Antavo is the solution opens exciting new opportunities for brands to scale better, more personalised interactions that add deeper value to the customer experience,” Gamble said.
“We have seen a huge amount of opportunity in the region over the past few years as brands want to unlock the value of customer data to accelerate growth. We’re excited to bring Antavo’s solution in the hands of more brands in the region, so they can put the power of customer data to work in more innovative ways.”
How Antavo is helping Rip Curl build community
Within the APAC region, one customer already scaling their community engagement strategy is surfing retail giant Rip Curl, which has taken its membership program global, leveraging Antavo to bring all its customer data into one streamlined community ecosystem.
“As old as surfing culture is, we’ve seen a real ‘renaissance’ since COVID-19 of more people going back in the water. But what we realised was there was no formal, or informal community at play,” Rip Curl’s CCO Michael Scott said. “So we identified a pretty major opportunity for us to build the largest and most engaged surfing community in the world. This is what our membership program has been designed to do – and thanks to Antavo we can deliver more personalised messages at scale and do away with traditional batch and blast messaging.”
“The team at Antavo have worked with us to help ensure we have the right platform upon which we can build and scale our membership program. We’re thrilled that Antavo is expanding its presence in the APAC region as we invest in more innovative ways to ensure our retail brand remains future-fit as we continue to evolve our brand to engage, inspire, educate and entertain our community.”
A no-code platform transforming the future of customer engagement
Antavo’s no-code, self-serve platform provides brands with a new format that enables far more creativity and management without the need for IT resources. Drag-and-drop interfaces and visual editors, facilitate quick and easy changes to provide users with next generation loyalty programs featuring gamification, social interactions and lifestyle engagement.
About Antavo
Antavo is an Enterprise Loyalty Cloud, providing best-in-class technology to manage experience-based, paid, and lifestyle loyalty programs online, in-store, or on mobile – connecting brands to their customers in a more impactful, embedded way.
Antavo’s no-code, API-centric platform empowers loyalty and marketing teams to run fully custom programs and manage them internally, without IT help. The company invests 60% of its revenue into its product and issues quarterly product releases.
Antavo is a unique cloud, pure-play loyalty technology vendor recognized by Forrester, Gartner, Loyalty360, and is the preferred choice for loyalty consultants, agencies, and system integrators. Antavo’s global clients include BMW, KFC or Kathmandu and global businesses in air travel, pharma and fashion. For more information, visit antavo.com.
Hero picture: Cofounder Antavo Zsuzsa Kecsmar pictured on the left, Caleb Gamble is the local APAC lead.
