Import.io, the startup which enables businesses to convert websites into usable data, has completed a $13 million Series A round of funding. The new funding comes after a year of record growth: in 2015 users of Import.io created more than one million web APIs and extracted data from over 5.5 billion web pages. The London- and San Francisco-based company will use the funds to further develop its data extraction technology and expand its ecosystem of analytics and visualization partners.
The new funding round was led by Imperial Innovations, with participation from Wellington Partners, Oxford Capital, Open Ocean, Delin Capital and AME Cloud Ventures. Import.io previously raised $4.5 million in seed and angel funding, bringing the total raised to date to $17.5 million.
As businesses come to rely more on external intelligence for critical decision-making, web data is becoming increasingly valuable—but web data has not always been easy, fast, or cost-effective to acquire or use. Traditionally, getting this kind of data required businesses to manually create so-called “web scrapers” or subscribe to expensive, generic databases that were often incomplete or incorrect. Import.io’s Data Feeds make it possible for businesses to harness the insights from external web data without any of the overhead of building and maintaining sources in-house. Any business that needs complex or regular delivery of large volumes of data is a potential customer of Import.io and its Data Feeds product.
“The web contains a wealth of business data and intelligence that can be used for decision-making and gain competitive advantage, but most of that data is locked in an unusable format. Websites are designed for human consumption: like reading pages or watching videos, not for computer-driven data analysis. Our vision is to create technology that makes it easy for businesses to translate the web into data that they can actually use,” says David White, founder and CEO at Import.io. He continues: “This new round of funding represents the biggest investment ever in web data extraction and we are thrilled to partner with investors who think just as boldly and creatively as we do about delivering on our vision.”
“It is clear that data is powering the next generation of enterprise software. Forward-thinking startups that help businesses use data to automate traditionally difficult processes are poised to be hugely successful. Data from Import.io is supporting the development of a new kind of intelligent software that automates the process of decision-making and it has already demonstrated incredible success,” said Eric Archambeau of Wellington Partners. He continued: “Import.io has a proven team and a rock-solid product that hundreds of thousands of users around the world rely upon. I’m excited to be a part of their continued success.”
