• Turkey-founded and Singapore-based marketing platform Insider, has closed a $121 million Series D led by Qatar Investment Authority, with participation from Sequoia, Riverwood Capital, 212, Wamda, Esas Private Equity, and Endeavor Catalyst. The round was raised at a $1.22 billion valuation, making Insider the first woman-founded startup to achieve unicorn status in Turkey and the wider Middle East region. 
• Insider is now the world’s ninth largest B2B Software as a Service (SaaS) unicorn. 
• Founded in 2012 by Hande Cilingir, with co-founders Serhat Soyuerel (Chief Revenue Officer), Arda Koterin (Chief Customer Officer), Sinan Toktay (CTO), Okan Yedibela (VP of Engineering), and Muharrem Derinkök (Chief Product Officer), Insider is a platform for individualised, cross-channel experiences, enabling enterprise marketers to connect customer data across channels and systems, predict their future behaviour with an AI engine and orchestrate individualised experiences to customers.
• Since its launch, Insider has expanded its global presence to 28 countries including in the US and Latin America markets and has partnered with some of the world’s biggest brands including McDonald’s, Unilever, L’Oreal and Adidas.
• The additional capital will be used to fuel expansion, enhance the company’s core technology and scale local sales and marketing investments. 

Press release:

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.

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 50 jobs over the next three years, with an emphasis on hiring female engineers to fill R&D and product development positions.

MEA has been a key market for Insider since its establishment, as the company first expanded into 2 regions in Europe including Turkey and Russia prior to MEA, LATAM, and the US. The SaaS company serves some of the biggest brands in MEA including Samsung, Estée Lauder, Avon, Toyota, AirArabia, Nissan, Liv by ENBD,  IKEA and Flyadeal.

“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 increase,” 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 one choice for every marketer on this planet.”

Today’s consumers engage digitally with brands across six or more channels on average. 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 personalization capabilities with emerging messaging channels like WhatsApp, Facebook, 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 behavior with an AI-powered intent engine, such as which customer segments are likely to convert, buy, and churn

● orchestrate and deliver individualized, optimized 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 also 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 US, fourth in Europe, second in Asia, and first in Latin America.  

Mr. Mansoor bin Ebrahim Al-Mahmoud, CEO of QIA, said: “QIA is constantly looking for innovators, both in the MEA 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 personalized results can provide value to both audiences and businesses.”

Insider’s platform is used by marketing teams at more than 1000+ global enterprise brands, including industry powerhouses such as Samsung, GAP, Santander, Vodafone, IKEA, MAC, Virgin, Toyota, Singapore Airlines, Madeira Maderia, Marks & Spencer, BBVA, and Estée Lauder. With teams on the ground in 28 countries, Insider ensures deep localization and support for clients. 

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

Hande Cilingir was selected 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 Personalization Engines 2021.

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