Blackbird, King River lead Series B for Australia's Lexer

Existing investor January Capital also participated. It brings total funds raised to date to A$43 million and will see Blackbird co-founder Rick Baker join the Lexer board.

Lexer claims to help about 150 brands and retailers across Asia Pacific and the US increase their sales by providing data, software and services that deliver an enriched customer view. The service is said to include tools that improve understanding and engagement at every stage of the customer experience, online and offline. Clients include Quicksilver, Zimmermann, Billabong, and Optus.

The fresh capital will be used for product development and to grow the currently 60-strong team by about 50 people during the next 12 months. The plan is to double staff across Australia, the US, and Southeast Asia.

“Most retailers don’t have the time or resources to handle the massive amounts of data that have been created as part of the huge COVID-driven channel shift. Retail behemoths like Amazon have reset customer expectations by leveraging their large data sets to better target them, putting smaller retailers at an even bigger disadvantage,” Lexer co-founder Dave Whittle said in a statement.

“We’re now democratizing this intelligence and giving any sized brand accessible access to beautifully simple enterprise-grade software to help them better understand and engage their customers, enabling them to not only survive but thrive.”

Blackbird raised A$500 million for its fourth fund last year, positioning it as arguably Australia’s largest VC with some A$1.2 billion in assets under management. Pandemic-driven digitalization of business services has proven a major theme in its portfolio in recent months, with its standout investment, graphic design platform Canva, having doubled its valuation to $6 billion.

“We love investing in companies that are defining a new world or shaping a new category, rather than just being a shinier version of a pre-existing business,” Baker added. “Lexer is solving the holy grail of all business problems for retailers: how to get a perfect view of their customer and build truly customer-centric experiences. The team is looking to redefine customer engagement just as Canva has redefined content creation.”

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Consumer
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Support services
• Australia
• Blackbird Ventures
• enterprise software
• e-commerce