Fast-growing consumer insights business Vypr has received new investment of £3.4 million, at a significantly increased valuation on its last funding round in January 2021.
£3m of the investment is from YFM Equity Partners (YFM), bringing its total investment in Vypr to date to £5.5 million. Vypr’s management team, existing shareholders and Chairman Richard Law personally invested the balance. Richard Law, who previously grew North West-headquartered GBG (GB Group plc) from a valuation of £5 million to £500 million, becomes the second largest shareholder after YFM with a holding of over 10%.
The new money will enable the business to continue its rapid growth trajectory through product enhancement and investment in its commercial teams.
Vypr has developed a market-leading, cloud-based product intelligence platform, enabling companies to save time and costs and increase product success by providing insight into every aspect of their product innovation. This ranges from concept screening and packaging design to product claims and marketing. Its client base includes market-leading companies such as M&S, Leon, and Ella’s Kitchen.
Over the past 18 months, Vypr has seen revenues double and rapid growth of its client base whilst continuing to invest in its sales and marketing team and technology. It has also made several senior hires, including appointing Kevin Baldwin as CEO, Chris Williams as CFO, and Adam Warburton as CPO as it continues building its management team.
Richard Law, Vypr Chairman, commented: “Vypr is addressing the nascent market for real time insights and intelligence that businesses need to enable them to make the right and most profitable decisions about what new products and propositions to develop and when to launch them. It is building both a strong market position and brand and has recruited an enviable group of household name clients that now base their decisions on Vypr Insights.
“I’m confident that our market will continue to grow strongly as consumers demand better products in shorter development cycles and as more business continues to move online. I’d like to congratulate the Vypr Team on their success both in growing the business and attracting this new funding and thank our shareholders for their ongoing support.”
Kevin Baldwin, Vypr CEO, commented: “We are delighted YFM has followed up its 2021 investment to help us achieve our ambitious growth plan over the next few years. The funding will bolster our commercial functions, building on the strong ARR growth achieved since 2021 and the significant improvement in renewal rates – an indication our clients are delighted with the insight Vypr brings. We will also invest heavily in our product team, enhancing the client platform and consumer app to provide new functionality and insight. YFM’s involvement has helped us to navigate the market and pushed us to think bigger.”
YFM partner Steve Harrison, said: “We have been really impressed by the power of the Vypr platform and how rapid and robust consumer-validated insights help clients to streamline their product intelligence processes and reduce waste and cost. We continue to be excited by the market opportunity and look forward to Vypr further developing its market-leading proposition.”
