Yoav Izhar-Prato raises $20 million in Series F funding for Kenshoo

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Izhar-Prato, co-founder and CEO of the Tel Aviv-based marketing technology company plans to use the new funding to drive forward their expansion plans.

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Yoav Izhar-Prato,   co-founder and CEO of the Tel Aviv-based marketing technology company Kenshoo  has announced that the company has succeeded in raising $20 million in Series F funding.

The latest round of funding was led by Bain Capital Ventures, which is the first time they have invested in the company. Among the existing investors who have taken part in this latest funding round are Sequoia Capital, Arts Alliance as well as Woodside, California based Tenaya Capital, who have now invested a total of $30 million in Kenshoo.

As part of the funding arrangement Deepak Sindwani, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures will become a member of Kenshoo’s board.

After the funding round was announced Yoav Izhar-Prato  released a statement  expressing his enthusiasm on the company’s  new partnership with Bain Capital Ventures as well as continuing to enjoy the  support of existing investors, which, according to Izhar-Prato’s statement is ample evidence of the strength of the digital marketing industry and Kenshoo place in it.

The statement went on to add that Kenshoo now intends to use this  latest round of funding to focus in expanding  the markets in such strategic points as Western Europe as well as in Asia and South America. Some of the funding will also go towards updating some of the companies software, focusing on its social and search platforms, whilst developing what they describe as “predictive media optimization” software, with will allow their advertisers a much more conclusive  picture on the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns.

According to industry estimates, the latest round of funding causes a value of between $400 million and $500 million on Kenshoo, who had an estimated annual revenue  of between $50 million and $100 million in their  last year, and long since been in a non-profit making situation since their founding in 2006.

Kenshoo’s  last funding round came in  November 2012, when the  company raised a $12 million in Series E round, with the funding being led by Tenaya Capital. At that time Kenshoo was evaluated in the region of $300 million, making for an increase of 50% in just 18 months.

Kenshoo was co-founded in 2006, by Yoav Izhar-Prato , Alon Sheafer and Nir Cohen, involved in the development and supply of software designed to present advertisers with the opportunity to manage all their online marketing campaigns from a single source. Wenshoo comes complete with individual social, search and local advertising platforms, each of them individually capable of providing subscribers real-time analysis on the effectiveness of their ad budgets.

Unlike a number of their competitors, Kenshoo’s policy is neither to buy or sell advertising space on marketing websites, with their income coming from any commission percentage from the approximately $5 billion in advertising fees that the customers spend annually through them.

According to Yoav Izhar-Prato, Kenshoo have a  client base numbering approximately 450 customers, amongst them some of the world’s leading ad agencies, social media giant Facebook, the Expedia  travel website as well as a large number  of  on and off-line retailers.

Currently Kenshoo employs around 400 people, most of them based in their offices in Tel Aviv, Israel while the company also maintains a  presence in San Francisco.

Yoav Izhar-Prato graduated with an honors degree in Business Management from Ruppin College in Israel. Izhar-Prato has been involved in the past a number of successful start-up, specializing in Internet and Mobile Applications. Before establishing Kenshoo, Yoav  served as area manager for networking infrastructure  experts ECI Telecom for their subsidiary in Thailand.

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