- General
- August 9, 2018
- 4 minutes read
Outsourcing startup TaskUs nets $250 million investment from Blackstone
image credit : TaskUs TaskUs, The Santa Monica headquartered startup which provides among many, customer service, content moderation, information annotation…
 |
| image credit : TaskUs |
TaskUs, The Santa Monica headquartered startup which provides among many, customer service, content moderation, information annotation and content moderation services for many of the world’s largest tech companies has now netted a $250 million investment from private equity funds managed by asset management and financial services giant Blackstone with TaskUs now being valued at over $500 million pre-money signifying great growth for the outsourcing startup founded 2008.
TaskUs which started with a $20,000 investment from its two co-founders Bryce Maddock and Jaspar Weir has leveraged technologies including AI, big data and advanced Learning Management Systems which helps companies quickly scale its IT services which has enabled its growth to about 11,000 employees globally providing services to the likes of Tinder, Autodesk, Deliveroo, Eventbrite, LetGo, iCracked, Wish, MailChimp and several other notable names.
Amit Dixit, Senior Managing Director at Blackstone, stated: “The growth in ride sharing, social media, online food delivery, e-commerce and autonomous driving is creating an enormous need for enabling business services. TaskUs has established a leadership position in this domain with its base of marquee customers, unique culture, and relentless focus on customer delivery. We are excited to partner with Bryce, Jaspar and the existing management team to build the world’s leading company in this area.”
TaskUs expects between $225 -$250 million in sales this year with 60% of its business being customer service with the rest 40% of the business being image tagging and content moderation processes while operating in offices across the Philippines, Mexico, Taiwan and the U.S. where more complicated tasks are handled.
“We’ve seen many of our businesses want to bring some work back onshore and use a hybrid approach, with more sensitive work or higher-value work done onshore and a bigger portion of tier-one work done offshore,” Maddock said.
The company would continue to be led by Maddock and Weir who hold the positions of CEO and President respectively along with its existing management team which would oversee more expansion of its business with this investment.
Maddock and Weir continue to hold sizeable stakes in the outsourcing firm.
Maddock stated “We chose to partner with Blackstone because they have a track record at building category-defining businesses. Our goal is to build TaskUs into the world’s number one provider of tech-enabled business services. This partnership will help us dramatically increase our investment in consulting, technology and innovation to support our customers’ efforts to streamline and refine their customer experience. We will also use this investment to scale globally with new investments in Europe, India and Latin America and continued expansion in the countries where we operate today.”
