Pricing Intelligence Firm Profitero Named IBM Global Entrepreneur Of The Year 2012

 Dublin-based pricing intelligence firm Profitero has been announced the IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year at the IBM SmartCamp Global Finals in San Francisco, California. Profitero beat off strong competition from almost 1,.000 start-ups from around the globe to win the title. The technology company provides a next-generation pricing intelligence service for retailers and manufacturers.

 

IBM SmartCamps are designed to provide entrepreneurs with the mentoring and insight needed to innovate in their markets. Past participants from IBM SmartCamp competitions have captured the attention of the venture capital community with nearly $50 million in investments, and have expanded to new global markets.

 

Profitero was founded by Volodymyr Pigrukh (CEO), Dmitry Vysotski (CTO) and Kanstantsin Chernysh (VP Engineering) in late 2010. The company has grown in the retail analysis space since its foundation, and now hopes to partner with IBM to expand their operations in the UK and throughout Europe. The company is based at Mediacube Digital Media Incubation Centre, Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT) in South County Dublin.

 

Profitero has developed a prototype solution to crawl retail websites and get real-time pricing information to help retailers create competitive pricing. Profitero helps its clients increase sales and maximise profits by leveraging high-quality online competitive data at scale. This, in turn, allows businesses to react quickly to changes in their competitors’ prices. To date, retailers and manufacturers have found Profitero’s data essential for pricing strategy, forecasting, price management, merchandising planning, product promotions, and market/brand positioning. Profitero is currently monitoring 27.5 million products across 2,500 European retail websites, and it plans to grow this to 100 million products in 2012.

 

Profitero raised €750,000 million in venture capital from Delta Partners and Enterprise Ireland, the Irish government agency for the development and growth of Irish enterprises in world markets, in 2011. The company has 13 full-time employees.

 

“We are honoured to be named the IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year,” said Volodymyr Pigrukh, chief executive officer and co-founder, Profitero. “Our solution is a natural complement to IBM’s smarter commerce strategy. We are looking forward to working with IBM and its network of technical experts, business partners, venture capitalists, academics and clients to capture our share of the smarter commerce opportunity.”

 

“Profitero is a great example of the kind of start-up company that IBM is partnering with around the world to build a smarter planet,” said Jim Corgel, general manager entrepreneur programs, IBM. “We look forward to working with Profitero to combine big data expertise with retail insights and entrepreneurial innovation to create new smarter commerce solutions for retailers.”

 

Profitero blog: http://blog.profitero.com/2012/02/profitero-named-ibm-global-entrepreneur.html

 

IBM press release: www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/36684.wss

 

More information about IBM SmartCamp Global Finals is available at www.ibm.com/press/smartcamp.

 

For more information about Profitero, visit http://www.profitero.com