From Ipsos, Paris, 10 February 2020:
Ipsos is pleased to announce the acquisition of a majority stake in Askia, a leading survey technology provider to the market research industry for more than 20 years.
Askia was founded in 1996 by Jérôme Sopoçko and Patrick George Lassale. Its high performing tools for collecting, analysing, reporting and visualising both online and offline data enjoy high recognition among more than 150 clients, including research companies and businesses. Askia has subsidiaries in France, the UK, Germany and the United States. Its annual revenues are around 5 Million euros.
Jérôme Sopocko and Patrick George Lassale will continue to co-manage Askia and deliver the highest quality services to their existing and new clients.
This acquisition comes after a year of joint action on the co-development of the DIY solutions that power Ipsos.Digital, the online research platform that Ipsos has launched in November 2019, under the leadership of Andrei Postoaca, CEO Ipsos.Digital.
Ipsos is looking to take a step further and develop the ‘survey platform of the future’ covering the needs of its core custom survey business, with the help of Askia expertise and technology. By combining the talent pools of Askia and those of Ipsos in building a tool for all our future clients, the new platform is expected to go way beyond equivalence of current software solutions on the market today and to provide a new paradigm for the market research industry.
Didier Truchot, Chairman & CEO of Ipsos said, “The more we worked with Askia, the more we realised the strength and depth of their technology and the more we valued the people we were working with. We understood quite quickly that there was an opportunity to not only invest in the solutions but in the business as well – for the benefit of Ipsos, Askia and our respective clients”.
Jérôme Sopoçko says “Joining forces with a company like Ipsos is a dream come true. We have been extremely impressed with their expertise, attitude and commitment to helping us to create the next generation of survey platform”.
Sopoçko continues, “The future of interviewing is not linear or browser-based. Whether the respondent chooses to type, talk or visualise their answer – in-stream analysis and decision making is required. This will allow instant recognition of intent, sentiment and attitude. It will result in the dynamic presentation of feedback and conversation management”.
Andrei Postoaca, chief executive, Ipsos Digital, said, “In todays’ fast moving digital world we need to make sure to connect systems in a seamless way and choose the best component for each part of the customer journey. With Askia, we form a solid foundation in our quest to collect and deliver research efficiently. Simple and intuitive for the client and the respondent but complex and robust in order to scale both in size and width in terms of way of interaction.
Our aim is to build a standard solution for the whole industry, not only for Ipsos.”
