France-based Plyce recently has just confirmed that it has scored funding from high-profile French seed funds, Jaina Capital and Kima Ventures.
The location-based social network that is along the same lines of Foursquare and Gowalla was only officially launched last month. Founded by former managers from web agency Majes as well as the current COO of Criteo who was previously at Yahoo-acquired Kelkoo, the start-up strives to be the strong-player in Europe within the next 3 years rather than conquering the already competitive markets in the US and the UK.
In addition to providing roughly €300,000, seed funds Jaina Capital and Kima ventures bring with them the expertise and the network of high-profile French entrepreneurs Marc Simoncini of French online dating platform Meetic, Iliad/Free’s Xavier Niel and Jérémie Berrebi of Zlio and Net2One. Simonici’s fund, Jaina Capital, most recently invested in Made.com while Niel and Berrebi’s Kima Ventures has invested in companies like Leetchi, Labotec and FreshPlanet.
Still, Plyce’s investment is rather miniscule in comparison to the $8.4 million Gowalla received in December or the recent $100 million acquisition offer Foursquare received from Yahoo. Nonetheless, this first level of funding should help get the start-up off the ground and the company has also confirmed that they will likely be closing an additional round before the end of the year – so stay tuned.