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Artesian Solutions Raises Some $3 Million from Octopus Investments

By Ed Silverstein
TMCnet Contributor

Artesian Solutions has raised about $3.2 million from Octopus Investments for a new investment round in the company. The money will be used to grow the firm at a time when demand for social Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions is increasing globally.

Artesian Solution’s social CRM solution is a cloud-based service, and the Series A round money will let Artesian Solutions increase its marketing and sales efforts in both current and new vertical markets, the company said.

The money will also up investments in new product development, service delivery to current customers and engineering, the company adds.

In a statement, Andrew Yates, Artesian Solutions’ CEO, said that the “investment from Octopus will allow us to drive a significant gear-change in our sales, marketing and engineering efforts, which means that we’ll be able to target customers in new sectors in entirely new ways. With this support from Octopus, we will now have the financial resources to fully express our vision for this exciting market.”

Artesian is growing at over 200 percent when comparing one year to the prior year, and the company is listed on the Deloitte (News - Alert) Fast 500. The list includes technology companies which have fast rates of revenue growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). In addition, Artesian was named a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner Group in CRM. And Artesian was named one of Microsoft’s (News - Alert) Global Partners of the Year. Artesian’s customers include Barclays, HSBC, Santander, Aviva, Global Radio, and Sanofi-Aventis, according to a company statement.

Octopus also has invested in such companies as Zoopla, Graze.com, TouchType and Calastone. Last year, Octopus invested some $2.59 million in Curlet Limited, a provider of interactive, video and social merchandising solutions for e-commerce and enterprise customers, according to a report carried on TMCnet.

In addition, Luke Hakes of Octopus was named to the Artesian Board of Directors. In a statement, Hakes said that “Artesian is helping a wide variety of companies understand that successful sales and marketing requires more than just knowledge about products and services.”

“Octopus invests in teams we can believe in, rather than focusing on specific sectors, so, having looked carefully at the level of customized intelligence that Artesian already provides to large enterprises, and on meeting the extremely talented team at Artesian, their potential was clear to us,” he added.