OMERS Ventures Invests $500,000 in LeadSift

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA and TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Nov. 27, 2012) - LeadSift, a Halifax-based start-up that mines social media data to generate high-quality sales leads, has secured $500,000 in financing from OMERS Ventures. The funds will be used for product development, sales and marketing and hiring.

Every day people publish hundreds of millions of posts on social media sites about their interests, preferences and purchase intentions. LeadSift's sophisticated online tool analyzes this data in real time to generate qualified and targeted sales leads.

"There's a vast amount of valuable data available on social media, but until now businesses haven't had an effective way to translate this information into actual sales leads. Our online tool enables deep and real-time data analysis, generating a constant stream of high-quality leads and letting businesses instantaneously reach out to and engage with customers," said Tapajyoti Das, LeadSift President and CEO. "Partnering with OMERS Ventures will allow us to continue to ready our product for commercialization, and lay the foundation for a long-term relationship."

Since its inception in 2011, OMERS Ventures has deployed over $100 million in capital and invested in 11 promising and innovative Canadian companies. The investment in LeadSift extends OMERS Ventures' geographic presence across Canada.

"From Kitchener-Waterloo to Vancouver and Toronto and Montreal to Halifax, Canada has proven to be a hotbed of great ideas and promising young companies, and OMERS Ventures' presence from coast-to-coast is a testament to that," said Derek Smyth, Managing Director of OMERS Ventures. "What we really like about LeadSift is its potential to flip the traditional online marketing model, allowing small and mid-sized businesses to proactively learn about potential customers and their preferences before spending their marketing dollars."

LeadSift is currently in beta testing with clients in the automotive, consumer electronics, travel and tourism industries. Currently focused on Twitter and Foursquare data, LeadSift plans to expand its lead identification algorithm into different data sources like comments, forums and blog posts. LeadSift is also looking to provide their lead identification algorithm to other platforms and have already partnered up with SalesForce Marketing Cloud.

About LeadSift

LeadSift helps sales and marketing professionals to identify and pursue sales leads more efficiently. Using a proprietary algorithm, LeadSift has found a way to sift through the millions of conversations that take place online every day. If a consumer is looking for information on a specific product, LeadSift will identify that. And if they're ready to purchase, LeadSift will identify that too. LeadSift was recently named one of the most enterprising new companies in digital marketing, winning the Startup Spotlight Series award in the GE Data & Analytics Category at the prestigious Ad:Tech event in New York.

About OMERS Ventures

OMERS Ventures (Twitter:@OMERSVentures) is the venture capital investment arm of OMERS, one of Canada's largest pension funds with more than $55 billion in net assets. It is an initiative of OMERS Strategic Investments (OSI), an investment entity with a mandate to build long-term strategic relationships with like-minded partners. As both an institutional angel investor and a later-stage investor, OMERS Ventures is looking for successful companies with significant growth potential and market opportunities. We are seeking like-minded partners with a shared vision of building a vibrant and successful knowledge economy. For more information please visit http://www.omersventures.com/.