Appier - Know your customer
Japan Disruptive Innovation
Appier offers a suite of AI-powered marketing tools to help enterprises acquire, engage, and transact with customers. By leveraging a company’s own internal data, powerful AI models can predict and analyze a customer’s future value and behavior. Appier operates in a large market that is benefiting from the structural tailwinds of DX, Ecommerce, and data analytics. Moreover, Appier’s AI models benefit from a unique flywheel where more data leads to greater learning and deeper insights, thus providing a much higher return on marketing spend.
An Attractive Business Model
Appier generates an Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of ¥11.7 billion, or just over $100 million. In the most recent quarter, ARR grew at 48%. The company serves 1,016 corporate customers, around half of which are Ecommerce or Digital Content providers. Appier targets large enterprises and generates an ARPU of over $100,000 per annum. Most enterprises initially sign up for CrossX, which has a usage-based pricing model – the more customers acquired the higher the revenue. Upselling the SaaS-pricing models (Aiqua, Aideal, Aixon) will lead to reduced churn, rising gross margins and higher Net Revenue Retention (NRR).
Huge Market Opportunity
Companies increasingly need to make informed decisions based on data and insight, especially when marketing to consumers. Appier is a key beneficiary of structural megatrends of digital transformation, e-commerce and personalization. AI solutions have an edge over rules-based models in generating personalized product recommendations that evolve with the users’ engagement levels. According to IDC the market for AI CRM/Analytics software stands at around $58b. We would expect continued growth in this market as companies invest in data analytics to build a view of evolving consumer behaviour.
AI Flywheel Generates Wide Moat
Appier is one of the key beneficiaries as the global advertising industry shifts away from content based on 3rd party data and cookies. One of Appier’s key differentiators is that its AI software can generate real-time predictions by learning behavioral patterns based only on 1st party data. Moreover, strong network effects drive platform value as more data drives AI model learning and improvement, which leads to higher accuracy and improved ROI for the client.
Award Winning Management
Appier was founded in Taiwan by Dr Yu, Dr Lee and Joe Su, a team of passionate computer scientists working in the labs of Harvard and Stanford Uni. Appier’s mission was to make AI accessible to solve real business challenges.
Selected Financial Data
The Product
Appier offers a one-stop AI software solution to grow a business along the customer journey, from acquisition, engagement, to conversion and retention. It has a rapidly growing blue chip client base that includes Toyota, DBS Bank, Shiseido, and Carrrefour.
