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Zebit Lands $25M Series D

2012-05-24
SAN DIEGO, CA, Big data platform for financial transactions, has just closed a $25 million series D round of funding.
Zebit, the first end-to-end big data platform for financial transactions, has just closed a $25 million series D round of funding. Parent company Global Analytics Holdings, Inc. will use the investment led by Mohr Davidow Ventures to fund Zebit's innovative platform-as-a-service in the financial sector as well as the growth of its micro-lending business. Mohr Davidow joins Crosslink Capital, Leapfrog Ventures, QED Investors, and a number of private strategic advisors in fueling the global growth of the Zebit brand.

"Zebit fits right in with one of our major themes around big data, analytics-driven insights and execution to disrupt and/or create major markets," said Bryan Stolle, General Partner at Mohr Davidow. "We know the platform works. Their initial launch market in the UK is a profitable $50+ million business. We think this is an exceptional team chasing a very big opportunity, and we're thrilled to be a strategic partner in this venture."

The Zebit platform is the first of its kind that supports the challenging micro-lending businesses from start to finish. That means that companies, such as online retailers, who want to do business with customers with low access to credit can do so in a single, customizable platform. The secret?

"Adaptive Data Fusion," said Michael Thiemann, CEO. "This is a science that has been used traditionally in military and wireless sensor applications - taking big, complex streams of data from multiple sources and transforming them into actionable inferences that are superior to using the data streams individually. We've applied this to Zebit, the first platform that performs underwriting on a per-transaction basis - because each customer transaction is inherently different, involving a unique purchase, unique variables and a distinct point in time - the holy grail of risk management."

"Competitors do their underwriting based solely on the individual. In our UK micro-lending launch market, we found that with Adaptive Data Fusion we achieved better, more accurate risk assessments which allowed us to identify responsible customers and pass savings along to them," says Thiemann. "Our platform-as-a-service offering allows our partners to enter new markets quickly and make them profitable faster. Our platform gets smarter and more experienced with new data, regenerating itself with new models in real-time."

Zebit has completed over a million transactions on the platform built by the same pioneers of real-time data analytics who created the industry-acclaimed FalconĀ® fraud detection system (a registered trademark of FICO), used to protect over 2 billion credit cards worldwide. The team also developed Aptex's SelectCast™, the first behavioral targeting system on the Internet, and Retek's SkuPLAN™ , the first real-time retail inventory forecasting system.

Victory Park Securities acted as a financial advisor to Global Analytics on this transaction.

About Zebit

Zebit, a brand of Global Analytics Holdings (www.global-analytics.com), is the first end-to-end big data platform-as-a-service provider in the financial space. Zebit was launched in 2011 as a scalable platform for responsible financial transactions, with a proven micro-lending initial launch market in the UK.

About Mohr Davidow Ventures

For nearly 30 years, the Mohr Davidow team has invested in early/mid-stage technology-based startups that redefine or create big new markets and deliver out-sized returns to entrepreneurs and investors. The firm partners with exceptional entrepreneurs to build companies where big data, applied analytics, and the reach and power of the web/mobile cloud can be leveraged to drive large and emerging opportunities in verticals ranging from finance to online marketing to consumer-driven healthcare and cleantech IT. Category-leading companies funded by Mohr Davidow include: Agile (ORCL); Brocade; Genomatica; nLight; ONI Systems (CIEN); Proofpoint; Rally Software; Rocket Fuel; Rambus; Shutterfly; Ticketfly; Visible Measures; and ZeaChem. For more information, visit http://www.mdv.com.
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