Global research platform Streetbees has raised $5.1m in a Seed round led by BGF Ventures.
Existing backers Octopus Ventures, an investor in Kabbee and Swiftkey; and LocalGlobe also participated in the round.
Streetbees leverages AI and mobile geolocation technology, along with social media, to gather data from consumers and give brands insights into real-time consumption.
Co-founded in 2015 by Tugce Bulut and Oliver May – a former Morgan Stanley trader – Streetbees will use the cash injection to grow its team and expand operations.
“In a world where brands are willing to invest huge amounts of resources to better understand their consumers, there has to be a better way to capture insights and Streetbees has found it. We use geolocation and mobile technology to engage the right person in the right place to answer brands’ questions.
“Streetbees’ grassroots research approach is providing the brands with the rich consumer insights they need at large scale at an affordable price as we connect them directly with their consumers without any intermediaries,” Bulut said.
The startup claims to have a million users in 87 different countries and is looking to reach 10 million people over the course of the next 12 months.
Harry Briggs, partner at BGF Ventures, said Streetbees was disrupting marketing research, which he added, has been carried out using the same traditional methods for years.
“People are waking up to the failings of political pollsters but market research can also be unreliable and Streetbees can solve that problem by providing rich qualified data in a new way that puts the world’s biggest brands directly in touch with their customers,” the investor added.
The news comes after BGF Ventures participated in cybersecurity firm Garrison Technologies’ £12m Series A and led Marvel’s £4m Series A round in December last year.