Finance platform Kabbage acquires SMB data provider Radius Intelligence
By acquiring Radius, automated lending platform Kabbage hopes to "dramatically expand [its] product set and service platform," says CEO Rob Frohwein.
Automated lending platform Kabbage announced this week it will acquire B2B customer data platform Radius Intelligence, which assembles disparate data sets about small businesses into integrated records and provides predictive lead scoring.
The purchase adds personnel, market intelligence and other info from more than 20 million small-to-medium sized (SMB) businesses to Kabbage’s platform, which provides working capital of up to $250,000 to consumers and to small businesses.
Radius says on its web site that its data includes more than a thousand attributes on each company, such as contact info, business health, company size, in-market purchase intent signals, social activity and other business data, across “every industry.”
Cancelled merger with Leadspace
Originally a provider of predictive lead scoring, Radius said last fall that it was entering the growing space of customer data platforms (CDPs) by launching its Unify platform. At the time, Radius claimed its CDP was the first intended for enterprises and entirely focused on B2B.
The SoftBank-backed Kabbage uses artificial intelligence to determine the right loan and deal, and the Radius data can help improve the quality of its assessments. Deal terms were not made public.
Radius CEO Joel Carusone and about 20 staff members from his San Francisco-based company will join the Atlanta-based Kabbage, but will remain in Radius’ San Francisco office.
In May of 2018, Radius Intelligence – which calls itself just Radius on its website – announced a merger with predictive lead scoring competitor Leadspace, and the newly merged company was supposed to move forward as Radius. That deal was cancelled several months later.
Differentiation for Kabbage
As a result of the acquisition, Kabbage CEO Rob Frohwein said in a statement, the addition of Radius’ business records and additional data analysis capabilities will help to “further differentiate us from other SMB-focused FinTech companies as we dramatically expand our product set and service platform to address the unique cash flow needs of small businesses.”
Frohwein told Tech Crunch that the Radius data products will no longer be available from Radius, but only from Kabbage. Radius said on its web site that previous customers have included American Express, Sam’s Club and Square, as well as Kabbage. The new business data records and analysis will allow Kabbage to better analyze requests for loans from SMBs, and potentially to offer new kinds of financial services.
