Dooyoo provides consumer reports for online shopping with websites in Germany, United Kingdom, Spain and Italy. It features test reviews of around 1.5 million registered products as well as allowing users to compare prices from various retailers.
The company raised its first VC investment in 1999 from Syntek Capital, a German VC specializing in media and technology. Fellow VC Earlybird spotted the company’s potential in 1999, and backed it in a financing round alongside
Dr. Hendrik Brandis, managing partner at
European venture capital firms have a successful track record of backing price comparison websites such as dooyoo. The most high-profile was the sale of Kelkoo in March 2004 to Yahoo! for €475m. Founded in 1999, Kelkoo was funded by investors such as Banexi Venture Partners, Sgam (Societe Generale) and Innovacom from France, Netjuice and BBVA from Spain and Kistefos of Norway.
Despite the changes to the online retail markets since Kelkoo’s sale, it is still proving to be a popular area of investment. Last year, market research company Forrester Research found that year-on-year sales in the European online retail sector grew by 58%, with the UK home to Europe’s largest online shopping community, which numbers 27 million, spending over €700m over the Christmas 2007 period.
Thomson Reuters data puts the number of price comparison and user-generated review websites in Europe that have been or are backed by VCs at 80. Investments in this area over the past 12 months include Looneo, a French social shopping community.