Big Data for Humans Takes Off With AirAsia Deal
Summary
Today EC1 portfolio company, and leading Data Science-as-a-Service (DSaaS) for customer marketing, Big Data for Humans announced a strategic partnership with Tony Fernandes AirAsia Group. As part of this deal AirAsia, Asias largest low cost airline boasting more than 40 million customers a year, is becoming part of Big Data for Humans fast growing list of enterprise clients , while supporting its APAC operations going forward in a newly formed JV vehicle headquartered in Singapore. We first backed the business in the summer of 2015 as it came out of Techstars, and we are delighted to continue supporting Peter Ellen in his third venture, after the recent acquisition of Maxymiser. At the time we led the seed round, our investment thesis was that software would solve an increasingly acute skills gap in data science by democratising it. Since our investment in the company a few critical milestones have been achieved, which boosted our confidence and conviction in our original thesis and led us to double down: There will no doubt be challenging times as we continue to build a presence in a large and competitive marketplace populated by fierce incumbents, but we are convinced that the Big Data for Humans world-class team is well equipped to build a very large global business, even more so now with a strong corporate partner such as the AirAsia Group on board.
