nGage Labs Raises $6.9M in Series B Funding & Appoints New CEO

nGage Labs, Inc., formerly known as CopiaMobile, the leading provider of in-store shopper engagement solutions that enable retailers to recognize, personalize, and engage shoppers, secures $6.9M in Series B Funding and announced the appointment of Rod Ford to Chief Executive Officer.

Ford’s duties will include overseeing sales, operations, and services for nGage Labs. Robert Alpert, co-founder of nGage Labs, spoke positively about Ford’s leadership capabilities and success in company growth, “Rod Ford has been hired as the new CEO to provide his product vision and innovation leadership to the company. Rod is very deeply networked with the executives and partners in the industry and throughout his career has demonstrated an uncanny ability to visualize needs and build solutions that are commercially successful by solving difficult problems for clients.”
Before his appointment, Ford headed up his own marketing technology company, CognitiveDATA, which was purchased by Merkle, Inc. Ford was SVP and General Manager at Merkle before his retirement from the company six months ago. Ford’s leadership put Merkle on the map as one of the fastest growing companies in America and one of the Technology Fast 500.
“nGage Labs is a Scottsdale-based company that is gaining a lot of traction and attention in the tech community for its development of shopper engagement solutions,” Ford told AZ Tech Beat. “The Scottsdale/Phoenix corridor offers us a great talent base and a number of important supporting business partners, including Avnet and Intel that contribute to the business environment essential for company growth.”
nGage Labs also announced they secured $6.9 million in Series B Funding “led by New York City-based Metamorphic Ventures. Previous [Scottsdale-based] investor AZ Digital Farm also participated in the round.”
The funding will enable nGage Labs to fuel their growth by expanding their executive and sales team as well as accelerate their technological development.
Ford commented on the funding to AZ Tech Beat, “Growth and expansion. We have some really unique capabilities already around digitizing the retail store shopping experience. People [now] have mobile apps and devices and shopper assistance tools and digital wallets and interface loyalty programs. All of these are now happening inside the shopping experience. The funding we just obtained from Metamorphic Ventures and AZ Digital Farm is primarily to allow us to grow faster. We’re making investments into new capabilities along with existing capabilities, all for being able to work with major retailers.”
Lewis Gersh, Managing Partner of Metamorphic Ventures, added, “The rapid digitization of the retail space is requiring new levels of personalization previously not achievable within the time constraints of a store visit. We are very excited about nGage Labs’ focus on new innovations and data sciences that will deliver on-demand personalization for each shopper entering the store.”
For more information on nGage Labs, click here.