3i unveils investment in next generation shopping search engine Twenga
3i today announces a €2.6m investment in Twenga SA, a next generation shopping search engine, enabling consumers to compare, review and purchase the most complete range of products online.
The company was founded in 2006 by Bastien Duclaux and Cedric Anes with the backing of a group of business angels including Jean- Noel Lebrun (ezlogin.com), Alain Cremer (Meilleuregestion) and Christophe Cremer (Meilleurtaux).
Twenga offers consumers the broadest choice of products for sale online. Twenga’s platform relies on a large-scale infrastructure and highly sophisticated software that manages the indexing, categorisation and clustering of millions of online offers. Unlike its existing competitors, Twenga does not simply display offers from a limited number of web merchants who pay for a listing, but actually references tens of thousands of online merchants. Twenga also lets consumers customize how they see their search results, sorted by user popularity, price, or by one of many highly specialized search results filters.
Twenga currently operates in France (www.twenga.fr), Germany (www.twenga.de), Italy (www.twenga.it), Poland (www.twenga.pl), Spain (www.twenga.es), and the UK(www.twenga.co.uk). These websites welcomed 7 million visitors in November 2007 and indexed over 40 million offers from 25,000 merchants.
Bastien Duclaux, CEO of Twenga, comments : “3i immediately recognised the value of what we are building. The money we have raised will allow us to extend our offer throughout the geographies in which we operate”.
Jean-Noel Lebrun, Chairman of the company, adds : “The powerful technology that Twenga has developed enables us to offer a service which massively simplifies the shopping experience; simply put, users can shop across all merchants and all products in one single place.”
Jean-David Chamboredon, Partner at 3i, comments : “The Twenga team has created a highly impressive business to date. There’s real demand in the market for an easily searchable and comprehensive shopping database like the one Twenga is building. We expect high user adoption growth in the coming quarters”.
Notes to editors
3i:
3i team : Jean-David Chamboredon, Daniel Waterhouse
Lovells (Legal) : Jon Harry, David Guez
KPMG (Finance) : Jacques Pierre, Jerome Lo Iacono
Twenga:Skadden (Legal): Matthias Boizard
Press Contacts :
Twenga, Ronan Mc Nern Tel : +44 (0) 20 8752 3209
Ronan.McNern@racepointgroup.com
About 3i
About 3i
3i is a world leader in private equity and venture capital. We focus on Buyouts, Growth Capital, Venture Capital, Infrastructure and Quoted Private Equity (“QPE”) and invest across Europe, the United States and Asia. Our competitive advantage comes from our international network and the strength and breadth of our business relationships. These underpin the value that we deliver to our portfolio and to our shareholders.
3i’s Venture Capital partners focus on investing in scaleable early to late stage technology and healthcare businesses on a global basis. The business currently manages investments across Europe, US and Asia. 3i VC plans to invest $1.5bn funds over the next five years in exciting and ambitious companies in the following areas: IT (digital media, enterprise IT and semiconductors), healthcare (biotech, medtech and specialty pharma) and clean technology.
www.3i.com
About Twenga
Twenga is the leading next generation shopping search engine, committed to giving consumers the largest choice of products and retailers online, and the tools to make smarter decisions. Twenga, meaning “straight to the point” in Swahili, prides itself on its true impartiality, listing search results by relevance. Its comprehensive product catalogue is fuelled by a proprietary crawl technology that enables the indexing of all products and retailers on the web. Founded in September 2006 and headquartered in Paris, France, Twenga currently has sites in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and, Poland. Listing 40 million products from over 25,000 merchants, the Twenga sites are growing rapidly. During November 2007, only one year after its creation, over 7 million visits had landed on the Twenga’s sites.
www.twenga.com/
For further information please contact:
Rachel Richards
email. rachel.richards@3i.com
tel. +44 207 975 3573