Bain acquires data and analytics firm Pyxis
Strategy consulting firm Bain & Company has acquired Pyxis, a New York-based consumer behavior analytics firm. The transaction enhances Bain’s ability to provide private equity, institutional, and corporate clients with accurate pictures of their customers, competitors’ customers, and actionable insights for growth.
Leveraging proprietary algorithms and billions of consumer data points, Pyxis delivers insights on market share, market sizing, customer loyalty, pricing power, and more. The firm draws on a huge volume of data, including 300 million+ SKU-level Amazon transactions, 700 million+ SKU-level e-retail transactions, 1 billion+ debit and credit card transactions, and 5 billion+ consumer store visits.
Pyxis was founded by a trio of ex-research analysts, consultants, and data scientists with three-plus decades of experience using complex datasets to assess company fundamentals: Max Lee, Ian Weber, and Jimmy Tang.
Bain’s acquisition of Pyxis will allow the firm to better determine where, how, and who consumers buy, as well as how much they spend and how their needs and demands are changing. This not only strengthens Bain's corporate strategy work for retail clients, but also its due diligence work for private equity firms. According to a release from the consultancy, their private equity practice increasingly counts alternative data analytics as a differentiator in consumer product and retail due diligence projects.
"Big data represents a strategic business opportunity, and we believe alternative data analytics is core to our work," said Richard Lichtenstein, an expert vice president at Bain. "Pyxis delivers state-of-the art capabilities that complement our proven 'outside-in' approach with the ability to use complex data sets to assess company fundamentals. In short, we're able to provide our clients with a valuable new dimension in due diligence and investment analysis."
Bain serves many of the world’s largest organizations, and is one the foremost global management consultancies alongside rivals McKinsey and BCG. Based in Boston, the firm has 58 offices in 37 countries, and books $4.5 billion in annual revenue.
"After working closely with Bain on more than 50 diligence engagements, we are excited to seamlessly combine our capabilities to be even better suited to meet our clients' needs" said Max Lee, cofounder and co-CEO of Pyxis.
The acquisition follows Bain’s move to purchase Danish strategy consultancy Qvartz, which was announced earlier this month. The Copenhagen-based firm is a big player in the Nordics, with 450 professionals delivering strategy, operations, and digital consulting to startups, local corporates, and multinationals. The deal, which has yet to finalize, is set to be Bain’s largest acquisition in over a decade.
