A series of high net worths in the investment banking space are continuing to back the growth efforts of ERN Global, progression which has seen the company named as one of the GrowthBusiness 2014 Tech Innovators.
ERN Global’s technology system provides card issuers and merchants with a way to increase the value of each card transaction made.
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Based in: London and Singapore Founded in: 2011 No. of employees: 14 Company founder: Dan Brassington |
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Founder profile:
A seasoned IT professional specialising in IT management and service delivery, Dan Brassington has over 20 years of international experience holding senior managerial technical roles for some of the world’s largest investment banks including JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, Mizuho Corporate Bank, and most recently RBS in Asia Pacific.
Background business profile:
Big data start-up ERN Global has developed a system providing card issuers and merchants with a way to increase the value of each card transaction made. Since being set up in 2011, the company has assembled an advisory board that includes a former president of Citibank Japan, Brian Thom, and Hans Beck, chairman and co-founder of Torch Partners Investment Bank and the former CEO of Deutsche Bank Japan.
Inside track:
Harnessing the power of data has been the bedrock of many new start-ups, leveraging the power of this information for things such as consumer buying habits, social media sentiment and cost efficiencies.
Now ERN Global is using data to build its own offering. The company’s system provides card issuers and merchants with a way to increase the value of each card transaction made. Brassington says, ‘Banks and merchants struggle to harness the potential of transactional big data because they simply don’t have the infrastructure to store it or use it to build accurate profiles of their customers.’
Brassington spent 20 years in investment banking on the technology side, running global infrastructure service delivery. Having spent that amount of time in the trading environment, he gained knowledge of the need and want for data.
‘Having sat on that side of the table, it gave me good insight into what the problems were,’ he adds. Brassington first looked to the mentors he’d accumulated during his career, gaining feedback from those who had spent their entire lives in banking and technology.
Growth to date has been accelerated by angel funding rounds as well as a couple of acquisitions, made to strengthen its big data analytics and loyalty platform Looop.
Commenting on going out into the market to secure funding, Brassington says, ‘We found raising money from high net worths easy to begin with as investors look for a couple of things: great teams, which I think we have; and a huge billion dollar opportunity in front of you.’
Recent milestones:
- Raised $6 million to date
- Built core team and opened offices in London, Singapore and Silicon Valley
- Architected, designed, built and tested a fully operational enterprise grade platform
- Launched first client along with multiple paid Tier 1 bank clients currently in Beta/POC phase
Upcoming milestones:
- Looop Version 2.0 to be released soon
Recent technology:
Looop is a purpose-built enterprise big data analytics platform and helps to speed analytics, delivering business users previously unseen actionable insights in real-time.
Products:
Looop brings together some of the world’s leading open source technologies such as CouchBase, Redis, and ZeroMQ. Looop is platform agnostic so it can sit on top of any Hadoop cluster or a data warehouse solution such as Teradata.
Alliances:
- Fico
- Swiff
- Eagle Eye
Investors:
- Angels
Contact details:
60 Gresham Street, London, EC2V 7BB
Tel: 0203 440 9850
Email: dan@ernglobal.com
Website: www.ernglobal.com
