Escale lands a US$22.6 million deal co-led by QED and Invus

Contxto – Last week, the budding Brazilian startup, Escale, closed a US$22.6 million Series C round led by QED Investors and Invus Opportunities, in addition to original investors.

In summary

Escale helps prominent corporate brands improve and enhance sales by outsourcing its marketing department. Now the publicity experts want to scale themselves.

The new investors, QED and Invus, led this round. Other investors included previous backers Kaszek Ventures, Redpoint e.ventures and Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital.

This startup disrupts the way major companies attract, acquire and sell goods or services to final consumers. That’s to say, Escale turns traditional selling processes into seamless digital buyer experiences.

Unlike traditional marketing agencies with “misaligned incentives,” what Escale does differently is manage the whole marketing funnel. With this comes brand awareness, acquisitions and data-driven sales analytics.

In-depth

Currently, the startup is offering services exclusively to health insurance and telecom companies. However, it is seeking to consolidate and expand to other main industries such as consumer finance, education and insurance.

“We’ll invest heavily in our technology and data platform for more efficient and transparent online-to-offline buying experiences for consumers. We’ll deepen our relationships with brand partners in the telecom and health insurance markets, as well as expand into consumer finance, insurance, education and other markets. And we’ll continue expanding our demand generation volumes, to deliver even more customer prospects to our brand partners’ sales funnels,” said Matthew Kligerman, Co-CEO of Escale.

Interestingly enough, all marketing expenses for clients come out of their own pockets to ensure they have “full control” over decisions. On top of that, Escale offers a performance-based revenue model that attracts customers. In other words, the company only charges clients a commission when there are tangible results.

Conclusion

Honestly, Escale sounds more like a traditional service-based business to me – considering the fact that its very own scaling depends on the team size. Nevertheless, I understand why this is a good company to invest in.

Nowadays, more than two-thirds of big brands hire externally, which not only helps with budgets but productivity, too. Therefore, outsourcing a marketing and sales team to specialized agencies could result in a very cost-effective strategy.

Big markets mean big potential returns for these investors.