Consumer research firm Milieu Insight bags US$5m in latest funding

Consumer research and analytics firm Milieu Insight has secured US$5 million in its latest round of funding, led by MassMutual Ventures Southeast Asia. The funds will be used to bolster product innovation and accelerate the development of new SaaS-oriented consumer insight offerings. Milieu said in a statement that the funding comes on the back of its strong growth in 2021 so far. OSK Ventures International Berhad and Genesis Alternative Ventures also participated in the funding, along with several private investors.

Funds from this round will also be used to expand Milieu's reach beyond Southeast Asia. Since its previous round of funding in October 2019, the firm has expanded its commercial operations to six markets - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Additionally, COO Stephen Tracy told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that the funding will aid in the development and release of a brand new product offering that will enable Milieu's platform to seamlessly ingest data from 3rd party data sources. "This will create some exciting new opportunities to layer data within our platform, such as allowing customers to leverage both their own CRM database or app users with our survey community. But we're also continuing to focus on and evolve our existing line of products, which includes Portraits and Studies. Both of these products will be seeing some really exciting new features rolling out soon," he added. 

Milieu has seen significant growth over the last two years, quadrupling its revenue since its last round of funding. The firm also saw its mobile app's user base increase from 500,000 in 2019 to over two million in 2020, and increased its customer base from 45 enterprise customers in 2020 to 180 as of October 2021. Additionally, Milieu recently launched an automated brand tracking solution, and Milieu Activate - a programmatic activation that enables advertisers to target mobile ads more effectively. 

Milieu Insight’s founder and CEO, Gerald Ang (pictured centre), said that as consumer preferences and behaviours evolve rapidly, it sees a tremendous opportunity to revolutionise market research to better meet the needs of business leaders today. "We have demonstrated sustained growth and this is a testament to the resilience in our business model. COVID-19 has accelerated the rise of the digital economy and we will continue on with our mission to use technology to empower organisations to connect with consumers at a deeper level. In time, we hope to inspire change globally by sparking meaningful conversations between brands and their customers around the world everyday," he added. 

Founded in 2016, Milieu Insights connects businesses directly with their target audience for market research, by using its proprietary mobile app Milieu Surveys to collect consumer opinion data across a multitude of lifestyle topics and sectors. The firm is headquartered in Singapore and currently runs a team of about 100 people across its offices in Southeast Asia. It has also garnered industry awards since 2019, including MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Market Research and Programmatic Agency of the Year, as well as several Mobile Experience awards.

Separately, Milieu partnered with video advertising platform SpotX in November last year to launch a campaign uplift solution for over-the-top (OTT) advertisers. The new solution measures the impact of OTT ad campaigns on brand metrics such as awareness, consideration and purchase intent for advertisers across Southeast Asia. According to SpotX, the partnership enables it to provide "rich and actionable insight" into the impact of OTT advertising campaigns through Milieu's mobile panel-based data analytics platform. The campaign uplift measurement solution leverages Millieu’s mobile app, as well as an innovative mobile-targeting approach to build control and exposed groups to OTT advertising campaigns. 

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Photo courtesy: 123RF

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