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This is a translation of a press release published at CzechCrunch.
Czech Founders VC, Zaka VC and other investors have invested in the startup SharpGrid.
In the past quarter, 6,765 new bars opened in Italy and 1,258 closed. Of those new openings, 161 were in Milan and 76 of them were in the premium price category. For beverage or food manufacturers or distributors, this is crucial information - a new opening means new opportunities and you need to get there before your competitors. But how to find them? That's what SharpGrid is doing, and it has now received its first backing from investors.
SharpGrid collects data on all on-trade outlets (whether they are pubs, cafes, restaurants, etc.): How many there are, where they are located, how much they sell or how expensive they are. It started in the Czech Republic, but over the last three years has expanded into 20 European countries and aims to become a global leader in on-trade market research. Global companies such as Heineken, Danone and Unilever also rely on the startup's data.
"Managing the on-trade channel has always been problematic. And it's the same all over the world. Tracking trends, sales or the outlets themselves used to be based on piecemeal information from the field that could be misleading. In contrast, our approach is based on processing vast amounts of both publicly available and partner data. It's not easy to obtain and process it, but we enjoy it, we know how to do it and our clients trust us," says Petr Sadílek, one of the startup's founders.
SharpGrid was created three years ago by spinning out of BizMachine, an analytics company. Besides Sadílek, there is another co-founder, Martin Nepraš.
Nepraš was a longtime partner at consultancy McKinsey and also co-founded BizMachine, while Sadílek started his career as a data analyst at Google, and then worked at Qubit and ROI Hunter.
"Our ambition is to become a world leader in the on-trade market research," says Nepraš, whose team of currently twenty-five people has been backed by investors. To accelerate its global expansion, SharpGrid raised €1.7 million in its first investment round from Czech Founders VC, Zaka VC and a group of private investors. "The next key step now will be to expand our network of data partnerships and build an international sales team," adds Nepraš.
"SharpGrid is unique not only in terms of its top-notch team but also in terms of a product that gives global brands the insight they need into consumer behaviour. Thanks to this, they can effectively compete for customers, for example, when launching innovative products," comments Vít Horky, founder of Czech Founders VC.
"SharpGrid has already become the market leader in on-trade market research and from our perspective has the potential to become a global leader in this segment. It is backed by a very experienced team and we are excited to have the opportunity to be part of its story. Also given the strong synergy with the market research division of our family business," adds Jan Kasper on behalf of Zaka VC.
