Month: April 2022

CFNEWS article by Baptiste Rubat du Mérac, published on April 22, 2022, at 6:46 p.m.

 

Nannybag is one of the start-ups hit hardest by the Covid-19 pandemic. Its online luggage-storage service, which operates through partner shops, was affected by both the closure of retail outlets and hotels and the sudden halt in tourism. “Even though we quickly reduced our headcount and costs, we were still burning cash. One option was to raise another round from investors, but at a lower valuation, which would have resulted in significant dilution and was therefore not particularly appealing. We opted instead to partner with an industry player,” explains Matthieu Ballester, who co-founded the company with Samir Senouci. That industry player is Pickup, a subsidiary of GeoPost (La Poste) and operator of a network of parcel pickup points. It is acquiring a 49% stake in Nannybag, resulting in the full exit of financial investors Fa Dièse and Luxembourg-based Expon Capital, as well as the company’s 25 business angels. They include Jean-Romain Lhomme (formerly of Colony Capital), Olivier Lebel (formerly of the French Red Cross and Médecins du Monde), Christian Veigneau (formerly of LeGuide.com), Fabienne and Jean-Marie Rétif (formerly of Billetreduc.com), Géraldine Le Meur (FrenchFounders), and Quentin Chidaine (RBC Capital Markets). The investors had subscribed to a €1.3 million capital increase in October 2019 (see below).

 

Nannybag follows in Eelway’s footsteps

The two executives are selling part of their shares but will remain just above a majority stake. According to Matthieu Ballester, there are no plans to sell the remaining shares, with the state-owned group committing at this stage to provide financing to the start-up in the form of an interest-free loan. For Pickup/GeoPost, this marks a second transaction in the luggage-services space, following its acquisition of Eelway’s assets in June 2020. Eelway offered travelers a luggage collection and handling service, with bags then delivered to the airport, for example. Despite raising two rounds from business angels and investors including Bpifrance, Axeleo, NCI, and Normandie Participations, the Normandy-based company filed for bankruptcy in January 2020 (see below). Interestingly, one of Eelway’s founders advised Nannybag’s founder to approach La Poste.

 

Headcount cuts and closure of the Montreal and Singapore offices

The pandemic forced the online luggage-storage service to drastically scale back its operations, cutting its workforce from 30 to 6 employees and closing its offices in Montreal and Singapore, which had opened just three and one months earlier, respectively. After a summer 2021 in which sales were still half those of summer 2019, the business only returned to pre-Covid levels two months ago. Today, Nannybag’s network spans 500 cities and 10,000 shops and hotels, with the business also benefiting from promotional partnerships, for example, with Portuguese airline TAP, Carrefour, and Airbnb. Luggage storage accounts for 80% of the start-up’s revenue. Nannybag charges €6 per bag per day and takes a 50% commission. Its main competitor, Italy’s Radical Storage, charges €1 less but does not offer a sealing system, unlike its French counterpart.

 

3,000 pickup locations to join nannybag’s 10,000-strong network

The remainder of Nannybag’s revenue comes from an outsourced luggage-transport service. By partnering with La Poste, Nannybag plans to add a third service: luggage collection from Paris hotels by bike couriers from Stuart, a subsidiary of the state-owned group. The bags would then be consolidated and transported to the airport by truck. The launch of this new service is not expected before summer 2023. In the meantime, the synergies between Pickup and its 49%-owned subsidiary will not materialize immediately either, as 3,000 of the 16,000 locations in Pickup’s network are expected to offer Nannybag’s luggage-storage service within a year, diversifying their business beyond parcel collection.

 

Transaction participants

 

• Target Company: NANNY BAG
• Acquirer or Investor: PICKUP SERVICES
• Sellers: EXPON CAPITAL, FA DIÈSE, BUSINESS ANGELS, FOUNDERS
• Financial Due Diligence Advisor to the Acquirer: CROWE HAF, Thomas Corbineau, Julien Latrubesse, Martin Lecina
• Corporate Law Firm: JOFFE & ASSOCIÉS, Thomas Saltiel, Antoine Lamy

Article by Gadsme, April 8, 2022

 

Gadsme, the only interactive AdTech platform delivering high-quality, immersive brand experiences through in-game advertising, has secured an $8 million seed investment just 11 months after launching. With investors including Galaxy Interactive and Ubisoft, Gadsme will use the funding to build out its team and invest in key talent as it scales the business to meet growing demand.

With Gadsme, immersive ads can now be served dynamically, while its unique technical capabilities enable genuine performance campaigns for the first time, benefiting advertisers across all platforms.

With more than 3 billion gamers worldwide, each spending hours playing their favorite games, billions of advertising impressions are now available. Unlike full-screen video or interstitial ads, which can interrupt the gaming experience, Gadsme focuses on non-intrusive ad formats that blend seamlessly into the gameplay and feel native to the gaming environment.

These ad formats work across all game genres, devices, and geographies. They are particularly attractive to brand advertisers, who demand brand-safe environments and privacy-compliant targeting capabilities — both of which Gadsme provides.

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Gadsme was founded in 2019 by digital media experts Guillaume Monteux and Luc Vauvillier, whose previous company, miLibris, was acquired by Altice Group. Completing the founding trio is Simon Spaull, former Vice President of Corporate Development at AppLovin, where he played a key role in the company’s remarkable growth.

This seed investment was strategically and selectively assembled from a pool of gaming and digital industry experts who believe in Gadsme’s vision and bring extensive experience and targeted expertise to further develop the product and customer experience. In Ubisoft’s case, the company began working with Gadsme before making a strategic investment, confirming the strength of Gadsme’s market proposition and the opportunity presented by the sector. The gaming market was recently valued at $134 billion, making gaming the new medium of choice for brands.

“For more than two years, the three of us as co-founders have been building the company to create the most technically advanced immersive advertising solution. When some of the world’s leading video game companies endorsed our approach, we knew we were ready to raise funding and scale the business. For this round, we wanted to find partners who could bring extensive knowledge and expertise to our company — not just capital, but genuine industry experience and insights from the very sector in which we operate. With Galaxy Interactive, alongside other founders of major gaming companies as shareholders, we are now ready to put our vision into action.”

said Guillaume Monteux, CEO and co-founder.

The result of their collaboration is Gadsme: a platform that has been built, tested, and refined into an innovative core product based on cutting-edge technology, now backed by unprecedented industry support, including multi-million-dollar investments from some of the world’s best-known game publishers.

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Gadsme’s immersive SDK is already integrated into a number of leading game studios, including Lion Studios, Ubisoft, Tilting Point, TapNation, and Voodoo, bringing brand-safe, premium advertising to a broad audience.

“We had met with several companies in the in-game advertising space, but Gadsme’s product and team really aligned with our beliefs and vision. Guillaume and his team are a natural fit for our portfolio, and their attention to detail, unique approach, and laser-focused vision reflect what we believe is the right path forward. We are excited about the space and look forward to supporting Gadsme in its mission to put the player experience first by connecting brands with highly engaged audiences. These intersections will continue to play an important role in this new digital frontier, and we believe the Gadsme team can make a real impact.”

said Sam Englebardt, CEO of Galaxy Interactive.

“Our cross-platform technology has been meticulously designed to provide studios with a long-term partnership that generates continuous, incremental revenue from their games. While in-game advertising has been a topic for 20 years, we now see a clear opportunity in the market to create something fresh and different — something that drives revenue while generating measurable brand engagement within games.”

said Simon Spaull, CRO and co-founder.

Gadsme is the only in-game advertising company in the world capable of running performance media campaigns within games, giving brands a unique opportunity to measure KPIs while reaching audiences within the walled gardens of gaming. At the same time, it enables studios to cross-promote other games in their portfolios. This is a truly unique proposition and a significant new commercial opportunity for the gaming ecosystem.
Our technology fully integrates brand advertising into the gaming experience through immersive ads that are dynamic, contextually targeted, and designed to deliver positive experiences for players. We are excited to see how the AdTech industry continues to evolve in 2022 and to play a key role in connecting game studios and brands.

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Gadsme’s product delivers the same high-quality, positive experience for brands and game studios alike. Its patented ad-viewability technology is unique in the gaming industry, ensuring transparency and reliable reach for brands, while the combination of an intuitive self-service platform and seamless SDK integration has created an exceptionally positive experience for developers. Gadsme’s next-generation platform has been developed in-house for more than two years, is metaverse-ready, and is ideally positioned to offer a range of solutions designed to maximize results for both advertisers and game studios.

Luc Vauvillier, CTO and co-founder, adds:

“We knew exactly how to develop our product to ensure stability and success. We had heard about the many technical challenges studios had previously faced with in-game advertising platforms. From the outset, our goal was to make sure our product was stable, reliable, and fit for purpose. Our proprietary architecture is ready to support future opportunities across gaming and metaverse advertising.”

Gadsme is known for its technical excellence and is now focused on delivering unmatched returns for game companies while driving superior ROAS for advertisers.