One of the first clients of the startup was the Financial Times.
By the end of January, British-Croatian startup Cognism, which has just received a seed investment worth 3.6 million kuna, will launch its second cloud software solution called CRM Refresh, reports Poslovni.hr on January 16, 2017.
The new software will enable large companies to keep their CRMs (customer relationship management) constantly up to date. With its first software, a cloud application for finding favourable sales opportunities, Cognism has already achieved good initial results. Their clients include the Financial Times, Guardian Wealth Management, Parabolic Asset Management, The Stamford Group and US marketing agency MEDIARadar.
Stjepan Buljat, a software developer from Zadar and a co-founder and head of development of Cognism, said that their goal was to provide the fastest access to good sales opportunities for sellers who use cloud solutions. He added that they find the necessary information from Reuters, Associated Press, Financial Times, and all other relevant sources on the internet. On its website, Cognism claims that it is already channelling to its customers information from more than 115 million companies and key players from around the world.
“In addition to speed, our solution allows retailers to immediately achieve a warm, human contact with potential customers, since we offer an accurate quote and source where this person gave the statement, which enables our clients to immediately achieve better connection with potential customers”, said Buljat.
Industry sources estimate that the segment of generating sale leads covers between eight and ten percent of the value of wholesale B2B market. This means that in Germany, companies spend annually up to 42.9 billion dollars on various services to generate high quality leads. In Japan, the amount is 48.6 billion dollars, while in the United States it is 172.4 billion dollars. “During this year, we plan to expand our presence in Great Britain and the United States, because our solutions deliver the highest value precisely for large companies”, explained Buljat.
Although it was founded just over a year ago, Cognism is already an international company in organizational and investment sense. The leading investor in Cognism, which has so far grown to ten employees in Macedonia, the United Kingdom and Croatia, is a software company Netcetera from Macedonia, which invested half of the amount. The rest came from Chinese investors Tsingbay Venture Capital and SC Ventures, and business angels Tom James, James Hodson and Usman Khan.
“Investments are led by director and co-founder James Isilay, who is from the United Kingdom, but lives in Switzerland, where he has built a career in the financial industry”, said Buljat. He added that they met two years ago through freelance jobs. “We had an idea to develop a solution for the financial industry, but the market has prompted us to go in a different direction”, concluded Buljat.
