Octoly investment from Havas Group & Otium Venture

The leader in influence marketing completes a Series A round of financing with three investors

Havas Group, Otium Venture, Twins Partners and the EU’s highly competitive SME Instrument programme have announced that they have invested a total of $10 million in Series A funding in Octoly, an innovative platform that offers brands the opportunity to reach a unique community of influencers with over 1 billion collective subscribers.

Octoly launched in France two years ago and has since built a team of over 60 people in flagship offices in Paris and New York. The platform acts as a gifting marketplace which connects a strong, and growing, community of over 10,000 women micro-influencers specialized in beauty with more than 200 brands such as Dior, Sephora, Milk Makeup, OPI, Clarins and Urban Decay.

Recently the company’s initial beauty focus has widened to fashion and lifestyle brands. Through Octoly, influencers can browse a curated selection of full-size products free of charge and in return, they create original content and publish authentic reviews for their followers on Instagram or YouTube. They receive no monetary compensation. Octoly’s community represents a total of one billion followers across five countries: the United States, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. Over 200,000 products have already been sent to influencers worldwide.

Thomas Owadenko, founder and CEO of Octoly said: “We are proud that in just two years, thanks to an amazing team, we have become the largest marketplace worldwide to connect brands and influencers on social media, hitting a current trend of over 200,000 product reviews annually. We have uniquely positioned ourselves in a rapidly evolving space and I truly see Octoly as the operating system for micro-influencers to grow and make a difference”.

Havas Group CEO Yannick Bollore declared: “We decided to support Octoly as earned media is becoming more and more important in the marketing mix for our customers. We strongly believe that the value of Octoly is in its capacity to deliver unbiased reviews for brands. Authenticity is the cornerstone of influencer marketing which is now a billion-dollar industry. Their unique vision to incite passion and build a unique eco-system between brands, influencers and their fans convinced us to make this investment. We were also convinced by Thomas Owadenko’s talent and the quality of his fantastic team.”