Local reviews site Qype, which lets you review any venue from restaurants and bars to gyms and childcare, has raised a new funding round amounting to a combined 6.5 million euros to throw fuel onto its mobile business. Investors include Vodafone Ventures and existing backers. Currently the largest user-generated local review site in Europe (yes, it’s ahead of Yelp), Qype has raised 3.5 million euros from Vodafone Ventures and a further 3.0 million euros from its existing three investors, Advent Venture Partners, Partech International and Wellington Partners.
The main aspect of this deal means co-branded version of Qype’s application will be pre-loaded on supported Vodafone devices, including Blackberry and Android on handsets in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands and Ireland. It’s likely that Qype will do best out of pre-installation on Android devices.
The Qype Mobile app, which lets you write reviews of venues on the go, was first launched for the iPhone in January 2009, followed by versions for Android and most recently Blackberry. The company says the app has been downloaded almost a million times. We reviewed the app here and found it to be pretty good, especially its ability to suggest places to you based on your previous reviews.
Launched in March 2006, Qype covers over 158,000 European towns and cities, has 600,000 businesses in its database and says it has 17 million unique visitors per month.
However, Yelp is attempting to gain ground in Germany with local community managers. But with that effort only launched in July, it is likely to be a fruitless battle for Yelp, despite their $50m in funding.