NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NewsCred, the world’s leading content marketing platform, announced today its $25 million Series C funding led by InterWest Partners. With this investment, NewsCred will aggressively scale global operations with a focus on sales, technology and product development. Additionally, Doug Pepper of InterWest Partners has joined NewsCred’s board of directors.
In 2013, NewsCred's customer base tripled and revenue increased 400%. The company experienced tremendous demand from global Fortune 500 clients such as Procter & Gamble, Capgemini, Blue Cross Blue Shield, General Electric, Xerox, Visa, Johnson & Johnson, AIG, The Hearst Corporation, Time Inc. and more. NewsCred now employs over 120 people in New York, London and Dhaka.
With the launch of the Content Marketing Cloud in 2013, NewsCred became the first company to offer an end-to-end SaaS platform for content workflow, sourcing, recommendations, publishing, distribution and analytics. Through the platform, brands gain unprecedented access to the largest content marketplace in the world – millions of licensed articles, images and video from over 4,500 publishers, ranging from the New York Times and Reuters to Getty Images and Billboard. Additionally, in 2013, NewsCred launched The NewsRoom, an exclusive freelance network that enables brands to commission the highest quality journalists, photographers, digital artists and videographers.
“Consumers expect hyper-relevant content, 24/7, wherever they are. Marketers need to meet that relentless demand by creating engaging content with simplicity, speed and scale. To deliver against this need, we've built the first end-to-end content marketing solution,” said Shafqat Islam, CEO and Co-founder of NewsCred. “By combining cutting-edge software and quality content, we've created a platform that changes the game for marketers. Today’s funding is the latest support for our vision and leadership in this increasingly complex industry. We’re thrilled to have InterWest Partners on board and Doug’s expert guidance in this next chapter.”
“In NewsCred, InterWest sees an opportunity in the $44B content marketing space that is comparable to what we saw with companies like Marketo, Optimizely and Spredfast,” said Doug Pepper, General Partner at InterWest Partners. “By any metric – number of customers, revenue and mindshare – NewsCred is the definitive leader in an important new software category, driven by product innovation and thought leadership.”
This funding round was led by InterWest Partners with participation from existing investors, including Mayfield Fund, FirstMark Capital and IA Ventures. NewsCred raised a $15M round in March 2013 for a total of $20M in previous funding.
About NewsCred
NewsCred is the leading content marketing platform. Pairing cutting-edge software with world-class content, NewsCred transforms brands into storytellers.
NewsCred's Content Marketing Cloud© provides the easiest end-to-end solution for content planning, creation, publishing and analytics. In one place, brands gain unprecedented access to the world's largest content marketplace, including licensed content from over 4,000 publishers and original content from NewsCred’s award-winning journalist network. Through NewsCred, global brands like Pepsi, P&G, Dell, General Electric and AIG have seen explosive growth in social sharing, engagement and lead generation.
Founded in 2008 by Shafqat Islam, Iraj Islam and Asif Rahman, NewsCred has offices in New York, London and Dhaka and is backed by FirstMark Capital, Mayfield Fund, IA Ventures, Greycroft Partners and others. Learn more at newscred.com and follow us on Twitter @newscred.
About InterWest Partners
For more than 30 years, InterWest has partnered with exceptional entrepreneurs to build winning technology and life sciences companies. With more than 200 years of combined operating and investing experience, the firm’s investing team has raised $2.8B, completed more than 70 IPOs, and participated in nearly 60 upside acquisitions. As the firm invests InterWest X, a $650M fund, the InterWest team continues to believe that providing capital is just the beginning of a long-term collaboration with entrepreneurs to turn their vision into a thriving company.
