CHILI publish raises €10 million to help brands and agencies scale their on-brand graphic production

Connected Capital leads investment in Creative Automation platform that saves graphic design professionals time and brings agencies and tech partners new business

Chicago, Aalst (USA, Belgium), March 29th, 2022 – CHILI publish, the Creative Automation software market leader, today announces it has raised €10 million in a new round of funding led by Connected Capital with participation from existing investors Group MC, Pamica, and PMV. The new financing will be used to accelerate solution and community development, attract new talent, and boost the company’s go-to-market and sales operations in the United States and Europe.

CHILI publisher is a cloud-based Creative Automation platform that enables brands and agencies to create, edit, and share visual content through secure graphic templates — in accordance with brand guidelines — that can be used across in-house teams and agency partners. Agencies large and small and such Fortune 500 brands as Carrefour, Coca-Cola, and Mars in a variety of industries such as retail, FMCG, real estate, automotive, and more depend on CHILI publisher to streamline automated personalization at scale. CHILI publisher is also utilized by MarTech vendors like Sitecore, 4AllPortal, Akeneo, Horizontal, Pimcore, and others to create new revenue streams and offer new value-adding connectors between content platforms.

Creative Tech – future-proofing visuals designed by professionals for professionals

“Consumers increasingly look for compelling visual content across touchpoints, as they navigate through online, social, and on-site marketplaces. Brands and agencies struggle to reach the right people with the right content on the right channel because all too often their design adaptation process takes time, is error-prone and not data-driven,” said Kevin Goeminne, CEO at CHILI publish. “CHILI publisher lets brands and agencies simplify and automate on-brand graphic production at scale, saving them time and money in the end-to-end production of that content for both online and offline channels. This investment allows us to grow our solution, team, and community so every professional in any market can create and repurpose professional, on-brand visuals.”

“Creative tech is the rapidly evolving space to watch. Brands and agencies are striving to become more productive, adaptive, and scalable. CHILI publish delivers just that by empowering them with a powerful and tailored platform. It gives brands the control and the speed they need to rapidly react to consumer demand trends, both in-store and online,” said Geert van Engelen, Managing Partner at Connected Capital, who will join CHILI publish’s board of directors. “CHILI publish’s relationships with MarTech integration partners and creative service providers, their attention to data security with recent ISO 27001:2017 certification, and a result-focused, solution-driven team makes us excited to contribute to their accelerated expansion.”

On Smart Templates and Creative Automation in Creative Tech

Creative automation leverages technology to efficiently and affordably scale design adaptation using Smart Templates. Smart Templates in CHILI publisher allow graphic professionals, brands, and agencies:

• to connect original creative designs, with built-in channel requirements, and integrated consumer or product data intelligence
• to produce on-brand content quickly
• and deliver ready-to-use graphics for high-volume, data-driven, multichannel campaigns.

Preapproved templates reduce administrative overhead, approval cycles, and production bottlenecks. This frees up creative teams to focus on higher-value creative work, while allowing agencies to leverage the automation features into new revenue and business models, as confirmed by Gary Howard, CDO at Precision: “We wanted a solution that could provide a complete user journey for our customers today and in the future. But finding a solution that could deliver the right combination of user experience and data-driven performance was a challenge until we found CHILI publisher. It is such a communication streamliner that it has become an online marketing hub where our clients store all their marketing collateral.”

In 2022 CHILI publish will be hosting a new edition of SPICY talks, our community event. If you would like to join as a press guest, thank you for confirming via [email protected]

About Connected Capital

Connected Capital is a leading investor in growth and buy-out stage European B2B SaaS companies. It provides capital and expertise in pure-play SaaS to entrepreneurs in order to accelerate the growth of their businesses. Based in Amsterdam and backed by institutional investors, Connected Capital operates across Europe with over €200 million of capital under management. For more information, please visit www.connectedcapital.nl.

About the CHILI publish investors

Connected Capital is the fifth investor to endorse the CHILI publish community, joining the ranks of renowned venture capital angels Volta Ventures, Pamica, Group MC, and PMV. Geert van Engelen, Managing Partner at Connected Capital, will join the board at CHILI publish, consisting of Michel Akkermans (Chairman of the board, Serial Entrepreneur, Volta Ventures - Chairman & partner, Pamica - CEO), Kevin Goeminne (CEO at CHILI publish), Willem Broux (Group MC - CEO), Stefan De Waele (PMV - Senior Investment Manager, InvestSuite/ONTOFORCE/RheaVita BV - Board Member), Louis Jonckheere (Showpad - Co-founder & President).