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Zoopla raises a further £3.25 million in funding for growth

Mike Butcher

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Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010
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Real estate startup Zoopla has raised a further £3.25 million in funding, consisting of £1.75 million of new equity finance from existing shareholders, led by venture capital firms Atlas Venture and Octopus, together with a £1.5 million debt facility from Silicon Valley Bank. This latest round of funding will be used to invest further in marketing.

This is on top of a £3.75 million raise back in January 2009.

So far Zoopla has used it’s funding to acquire a litany of ailing competitors including OnOneMap.com, DotHomes.com, Extate.com and the PropertyFinder Group. Gunning to become to become one of the UK’s top property websites, it’s now on 5 million visitors per month.

A national TV advertising campaign will kick off again in January.

It’s innovated far better than the main player Right Move, producing an augmented reality app.

Zoopla has a lot of clever features including one where you can ‘claim your own house’ and start extolling its features, and a feature called ‘tempt me’ where potential sellers can be lured into the market for the right price – something that might well appeal to credit-crunched consumers. It is also out to disrupt older property sites: you can list your home for sale through an agent. It also targets agents themselves in an attempt to lure them from aggregators like RightMove.

Alex Chesterman is Zoopla’s founder and CEO, and previously co-founded ScreenSelect.co.uk (now LOVEFiLM.com). Other backers of Zoopla include Nauiokas Park LLP as well as angel investors Sherry Coutu (who founded Interactive Investor), Robin Klein of the Accelerator Group, Simon Murdoch, Andy Phillipps and William Reeve.

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  • http://www.edocr.com Manoj Ranaweera

    Mike, good to hear Zoopla has raised another round. Would be good to introduce http://www.makeurmove.co.uk to TechCrunch readers some point in time, which also uses Zoopla. They have a nice startup story in terms of how the company resourced staff and raised small rounds of capital. Will ping you when there is breaking news…

    Well done, Alex. We need to get you to join a Techcelerate event in Manchester in 2011. Will be in touch…

    Disclaimer: Makeurmove is a Techcelerate Member.

  • http://www.emoov.co.uk Russell

    As an online estate agent we have used Zoopla since day one. They are the hottest property website there is and great value considering their cost as the number 2/number 3 in the UK (depending on whether you acknowledge Hit Wise or Com Res)

  • http://www.respondhq.com Guy Cookson

    It will be interesting to see if Zoopla can break Rightmove’s stranglehold in the UK property market, as word of mouth is def still with RM at the moment. Maybe the TV campaign will help, but getting agencies onside will help most of all, and right now most point buyers or renters to Rightmove even to the exclusion of their own sites.

  • http://www.letpropertyrentproperty.co.uk Steve

    As an online letting agent we use and have good feeds from Zoopla. At http://www.letpropertyrentproperty.co.uk we have found them very professional and you do not have to sign up for a long term contract, month to month is fine. We found an increase in feeds from their TV adverts.

  • http://www.blondefriendfinder.com/ Melinda Love

    I like them, good job fellas

  • http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/01/04/zoopla-continues-property-site-roll-up-acquires-houseprices-co-uk/ Zoopla continues property site roll up – acquires Houseprices.co.uk

    [...] the leader in the space. The terms of the deal are undisclosed but, having secured a further £3.25 million in funding in December (adding to the £3.75 million already raised in January 2009), Zoopla would appear to have deep [...]

  • http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/zoopla-moves-in-on-android-with-augmented-reality-house-hunting-app/ Zoopla moves in on Android with Augmented Reality house hunting app

    [...] estate startup Zoopla, which to date is funded to the tune of £7m, has launched a mobile app for [...]

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