NewsCred acquired by Industry Dive

The marketing arm of NewsCred, a global technology company situated in Banglaesh, is getting acquired by Industry Dive, a business journalism company.

The acquisition adds 40 new people to the company's 175 current employees and it expands its presence from DC to New York, London and Dhaka, Bangladesh, reports Axios.

The deal includes all of the studio's assets, including its 100+ client roster and 40 employees from NewsCred's Content Marketing studio.

Industry Dive is a niche B2B media company, but it's long been profitable, and it's pretty sizable.

The acquisition will help Industry Dive sell custom ads to its audience of more than 11 million business decision-makers across 20 niche industries, which includes topics like banking, bio, pharmaceuticals, construction, education, grocery, marketing, retail, smart cities, transport, waste and others.

Industry Dive's growth strategy has always been to take business topics that already have sizable audiences and advertising potential and launch a digital, ad-supported newsletter and other products around each.

It determines which verticals to invest in through several criteria, like whether a particular field has high turnover, heavy government regulation or if there's high capital spend within the industry, particularly on technology.

"We think each vertical can be worth $10 million–$20 million just in digital newsletter ad spend," says Industry Dive co-founder and CEO Sean Griffey.

Retail is the company's largest vertical, and waste is growing fast.

Last year, Industry Dive sold a majority stake to Charlotte, North Carolina-based private equity firm Falfurrias Capital Partners, seven years after its founding in Washington, DC.

At the time, its revenue was roughly $30 million, according to sources.

Today, Griffey says revenue is up significantly and that the business is highly profitable.

"Q2 was our best quarter in company history from both a revenue and profit standpoint," says Griffey.