Kantar follows Public sale with Qmee purchase

17 May 2022 Consultancy.uk

Kantar has continued the reorientation of its global business, with both a purchase and a sale. The firm offloaded its Kantar Public wing earlier in May 2022, before sealing a deal to add fraud prevention platform Qmee to its Profiles Division.

Kantar is one of the world’s largest marketing data and analytics companies. The data, insights and consulting firm boasts complete, holistic understanding of how businesses think, feel and act in over 90 markets. 2022 sees the firm looking to extend and re-evaluate that offering, backed by a private equity deal with Bain Capital in 2019.

In May 2022, it entered into an agreement for the sale of Kantar Public to Trilantic Europe, a pan-European private equity firm focused on mid-market transactions. Seeing Kantar Public establish itself as an independent business, the deal will see Tilantic Europe partner with the management team to deliver Kantar Public’s next phase of purpose-based growth to create a better public realm. Launched in 2016, Kantar Public currently employs more than 700 people in over 20 countries.

Kantar follows Public sale with Qmee purchase

Kantar Public CEO Dr Michelle Harrison noted, “With Kantar’s support we have grown to become the leading evidence and advisory partner for government and the public realm. Now, with our scale and our specialist focus, this is the right time to stand alone, with the support of our new investor Trilantic Europe.”

As Kantar looks to shift its emphasis elsewhere, it has now committed to acquiring Qmee; UK-based app survey platform and fraud prevention technology provider. Once completed, Qmee will become a part of Kantar’s Profiles Division, which is responsible for primary research within Kantar. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Announcing the deal, Chris Jansen, Kantar’s Chief Executive commented, “This builds on our recent acquisition of Blackwood Seven and the sale of our Kantar Public business. It is another illustration of the progress we are making in focusing our portfolio on providing highly differentiated and advanced analytics-based products and services to consumer-facing brands. Consumer insights are a key input in developing business, marketing and creative strategies; the acquisition of Qmee further strengthens our leadership position in delivering the most trusted and robust research to inform those strategies.” 

Kantar follows Public sale with Qmee purchase

Qmee offers brands access to consumers’ opinions and attitudes via an easy to use app, which has a reputation for delivering the industry’s best response rates. Behind the consumer facing app, Qmee provides a panel of more than 750,000 active and loyal consumers across North America, the UK and Australia, and most recently France and Germany, alongside advanced neural networks anti-fraud technology. The company’s rapid growth has continued over the past year, with survey completes increasing by 44% on 2020 and 119% on 2019.

Jonathan Knight, Qmee Co-founder and CEO, added, “Today’s announcement is a terrific endorsement of the vision Nick Sutton and I had when we founded Qmee ten years ago. We would like to thank the capital D team for supporting us over the past year of tremendous growth for Qmee. 

More on: Kantar Group
United Kingdom
Company profile
Kantar Group is not a United Kingdom partner of Consultancy.org
Partnership information »
Partnership information

Consultancy.org works with three partnership levels: Local, Regional and Global.

Kantar Group is a not a partner of Consultancy.org.

Upgrade or more information? Get in touch with our team for details.