• by Ray Schultz , December 14, 2022

Zappi, a consumer insights platform for creators, has raised $170 million in growth capital.

The funding round was led by Sumeru Equity Partners with participation by co-investors. Sumeru principals Sanjeet Mitra, George Kadifa and Sofija Ostojic are joining Zappi’s board of directors.  

This investment will accelerate Zappi’s position as a  software platform for agile consumer insights, the firm says.

Zappi works with over 340 global brands, including PepsiCo, McDonald’s, Heineken, and Reckitt to help them bring pre-launch consumer insights to their content creation processes, the firm says.

 “Digitizing our core capabilities is at the heart of our strategy to deliver better and faster consumer-based decision making,” says Stephan Gans, senior vice president and chief consumer insights and analytics officer at PepsiCo. “Zappi has been a key partner for PepsiCo to deliver on this vision, most notably with advertising pre-testing tools that we’ve scaled to 100+ Insights professionals across the globe.”

McDonald’s started working with Zappi in 2018 to “change the role of insights in our innovation development process," says Matt Cahill, senior director, head of consumer insights, McDonald’s USA.

Zappi’s platform allows users to compare studies against 1.2 billion historical data points.

“Today, only 3% of the market research industry is digitized,” says Steve Phillips, CEO and co-founder of Zappi.  “The other 97% is controlled by service-based incumbents that are slow, expensive, analog, and don’t fit the needs of creators.”

Founded in 2012, Zappi has over 300 staffers in 13 countries.