Clichy, 27 December 2016  - L’Oréal announces a strategic investment in the early stage fund Partech International Venture VII managed by Partech Ventures, an international venture capitalist firm headquartered in Paris, France, with offices in Berlin and San Francisco. This investment complements L’Oréal’s comprehensive strategy to connect to the world’s hottest startup scenes and the opportunity to participate in the financing of promising early stage digital businesses.

With its focus on tech and digital champions, Partech Ventures will help L’Oréal tap into innovations and services that can transform people’s relationship to beauty through prediction and personalization tools, artificial intelligence, marketplaces and new services.

“Our unique relationship with Partech Ventures will give us access to a high quality and comprehensive sourcing of the best B2B and B2C digital players and contribute to the Group’s global strategy of Open Innovation. It will create value across the board for our brand and marketing teams and will connect us to new ideas and partners to better engage and serve our consumers,” said Lubomira Rochet, Chief Digital Officer for L’Oréal.

“We are very proud to work with L’Oréal, global leader of the beauty industry, as one of our strategic partners,” said Philippe Collombel, co-Managing Partner of Partech Ventures. “L’Oréal has been amongst the first groups to understand the full potential of digital transformation, and to integrate new tech partners and tools within its offer and organization. This partnership embodies Partech Ventures’ international DNA and will enable win-win business opportunities for L'Oréal and our portfolio companies.”

L’Oréal’s investment in a Partech Ventures fund follows the Group’s investment in the Founders Factory, a digital accelerator and incubator, announced last May. These partnerships will deepen and support L’Oréal’s broader digital innovation strategy which also includes L’Oréal’s Research and Innovation Technology Incubator located in San Francisco that has spearheaded a number of game changing digital services.


About L'Oréal
L’Oréal has devoted itself to beauty for over 105 years. With its unique international portfolio of 32 diverse and complementary brands, the Group generated sales amounting to 25.26 billion euros in 2015 and employs 82,900 people worldwide. As the world’s leading beauty company, L’Oréal is present across all distribution networks: mass market, department stores, pharmacies and drugstores, hair salons, travel retail, branded retail and e-commerce.
Research and innovation, and a dedicated research team of 3,870 people, are at the core of L’Oréal’s strategy, working to meet beauty aspirations all over the world. L’Oréal’s sustainability commitment for 2020 “Sharing Beauty With All” sets out ambitious sustainable development objectives across the Group’s value chain. www.loreal.com


About Partech Ventures:
Founded in 1982 in Silicon Valley, Partech Ventures is a global investment firm with a team spread across offices in San Francisco, Paris and Berlin. Most Partners have been entrepreneurs themselves or have held management positions within tech companies. The partnership acts and invests as a single team, helping entrepreneurs build fast-growing tech and digital companies addressing large markets across multiple continents. Partech Ventures partners with entrepreneurs at the seed (Partech Entrepreneur), venture (Partech International) and/or growth (Partech Growth) stages. Companies backed by Partech Ventures have completed 21 initial public offerings and more than 50 major M&A transactions with leading international companies. Since 2012, the team has built a pioneering business development platform fostering synergies and business relationships between entrepreneurs and strategic partners.
Preqin, an independent global research firm, has ranked Partech Ventures as one of the ten most consistent venture capital firms in the world, and the only European VC in the top 25.
www.partechventures.com  
www.partechshaker.com 


Press contact
L’Oréal 
Polina Huard  
polina.huard@loreal.com 
tel.: + 33 1 47 56 87 88

Partech Ventures
France: 
Alexis Bollaert
alexis.bollaert@antidox.fr 
tel.: +33 6 63 73 82 97

Germany: 
Andreas Krönke 
andreas.kroenke@piabo.net 
tel.: +49 171 2693522

UK: 
Florence Naillat 
florence.naillat@antidoxgroup.com 
tel.: +44 777 8227 546 
          
USA: 
Stephanie Rhumeur 
stephanie@partechventures.com 
tel.: +1 415 812 8452