Highland leads $22m investment in Brandwatch

The funding will be used to expand Brandwatch's product and engineering teams, for investment in physical infrastructure and to expand its operations across emerging social media networks in Asia.

Highland's contribution to the round was drawn from the Highland Europe fund, which closed last week on its hard-cap of €250m. It is the ninth investment from the fund, which held its final close in November 2012 and led a €23.5m capital injection into AMCS Group in January.

Existing backers, including Nauta Capital, also joined the round for Brandwatch.

Highland stated that it was attracted to the company by its client list and its growth record across Europe and North America.

Previous funding
In March 2012, Nauta led a €4.6m round for Brandwatch, contributing €4m from its €150m third fund. Gorkana Group also contributed to the round, following its earlier investment in the company.

Company
Founded in 2007 and based in Brighton, Brandwatch is a social media monitoring company that analyses what people are saying about brands online. It reported year-on-year revenue growth of 100% in 2013 and has more than 1,000 clients including British Airways, Monster, Verizon, Pepsico and Dell.

The company also has offices in Berlin, Stuttgart, New York and San Fransisco, and recently expanded its client base into South America and Asia. Last year it launched its Vizia platform, which analyses and displays brands' social data in real time.

People
Giles Palmer is CEO at Brandwatch. Sam Brooks, a partner and co-founder at Highland Europe, will take a seat on the board. Carles Ferrer is a general partner at Nauta and already has a seat on the Brandwatch board.

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• Topics
• Expansion
• Technology
• UK / Ireland
• United Kingdom
• Highland Capital Partners