Fintech company Ansarada’s revolutionary software helps businesses in major transactions: now it’s looking for growth opportunities itself.
Most B2B businesses don’t get the chance to boast how it has forged its own product category, but Ansarada can.
Ansarada's cloud-based "data rooms" prepare businesses for significant events, such as takeovers, fundraising activities, acquisitions or public listings. It does this by using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to analyse the characteristics of more than 20,000 business deals in its database.
Data rooms are secure areas where target companies disclose sensitive information to potential buyers or partners. They were once physical rooms but are now generally “virtual”, where suitors receive a code or access key to access online material.
Ansarada’s software allows businesses undertaking a “material event”, such as a merger and acquisition (M&A), to assess the quality of interested parties – separating serious contenders from “tyre kickers”.
Ansarada CEO Sam Riley said recently that old-style “data rooms are soon to be as dead as the typewriter and the fax machine” because of his company’s Material Information Platform, which it claims is a world first.
“Companies and their advisors want a deal platform that adds more value than just the due diligence process,” he said. “They want a platform that is always on, easy to keep that way and ready at a moment’s notice to execute an opportunity.”
Power of technology
Last year, Ansarada launched the AiQ Bidder Engagement Score with Australian data analytics company Quantium. It uses AI to align a bidder’s behavioural patterns across 57 attributes with those of successful and engaged bidders in M&A deals. Ansarada claims that within seven days the model can predict with up to 97 per cent accuracy if a bidder will complete its due diligence work and submit an offer.
Ansarada CMO Robbie Morris says focusing on customers’ needs has been a major reason for the company’s success. “The focus on the customer is something like I've never seen before,” he says.
“It's a single place where all key pieces of information relating to a business are stored and consistently updated.”
“It made us realise that the category we’re playing in – the virtual data room space – was something that was beginning to become commoditised and overrun by low-cost providers entering the market with low-quality products. Customers were looking for a solution.”
Morris says the AIQ Bidder Engagement Score is an excellent example of how its clients gain an advantage by using data and AI. "It shows them the bidders who are the most engaged and how they're likely to perform, and also gives them the levers to pull to drive the best possible outcome for the transaction," he says. "Rather than just being essentially a data storage platform it actually becomes a deal management tool, adding value in the process."
Room for growth
Founded in 2006, Ansarada says client numbers now number in the “hundreds of thousands” and its software has been involved in deals worth trillions of dollars. With its headquarters in Sydney, the company’s major growth focus till recently was the Asia-Pacific.
“We grew predominantly in this region – gaining market dominance in Australia – and then in the last couple of years we’ve set our sights on expanding through the UK and US, where most of our audience is,” Morris says. “The majority of the opportunity in this space.
“A lot of cross-border transactions are completed on the product, so we have an existing user and client base over there that we could begin to work with to build our credibility and reputation, and then expand with a regional specific approach.”
Ansarada has recently appointed marketing managers in each major region and realigned its sales and marketing teams to work together in pods aligned with specific target industries. The plan is for these tight-knit sales and marketing pods to target key industry verticals, such as technology businesses.
Morris says Ansarada is also looking at how it can broaden the potential client base for its software by assisting companies that aren't going through an "event". Like homeowners getting their house ready for sale, each business spends six to nine months getting the company into the best possible shape for investors. The results of this are within its virtual data rooms. This information can help owners and managers assess the actual state of the business, perhaps to see what it looks like at its best, and work on plans to fix weaknesses.
"Even at its simplest use case, [the platform] is a single place where all key pieces of information relating to a business are stored and consistently updated," he says. "That's a huge time saver."
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Further reading: Marketers should not be afraid of AI
Photo: Jon Moore on Unsplash