Job Search Engine Adzuna.co.uk Receives £500k Investment Backing from Index Ventures

LONDON, January 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ –
Adzuna, the next-generation job search engine, has today announced it has raised £500k investment financing from Index Ventures, The Accelerator Group and existing investors including Passion Capital. The latest funding follows a seed round last year.
Launched in July 2011, Adzuna classifieds aims to become the world’s leading search engine for classifieds, bringing together all the ads and connecting users with them in new ways.
Adzuna collates almost every job ad in the UK in real time from hundreds of websites, including all of the major job boards as well as sources like the London 2012 Olympics, Williams Formula 1 and the Royal Household. In addition to listing around 500,000 vacancies, the unique Adzuna Connect feature helps users “get hired with a little help from their friends” by connecting them to Adzuna jobs where they have first or second-degree connections on LinkedIn or Facebook.
The site also offers a wealth of data about the jobs and companies recruiting, from average salary data to employee reviews, interview questions and “CEO Approval ratings”.
Since launch in July, Adzuna has rapidly grown to hundreds of thousands of visitors per month, and was named a Top 20 Startup of 2011 by Startups.co.uk, a finalist in the Website of the Year awards, and shortlisted for the Europas.
This latest round of funding will be used to drive further product innovation around social and data, and expand into other verticals as well as international markets.
Robin Klein, Venture Partner at Index, said, “We’re delighted to be working with Andrew and Doug, experienced entrepreneurs whom we know well from their track records at Gumtree, Qype and Zoopla. The Adzuna team has achieved a great deal in a short period of time, and we believe the innovations they continue to bring to the market will change the way people search for classified ads.”
Doug Monro, Co-Founder of Adzuna, said: “We’re really excited to have top-class investors like Index, The Accelerator Group and Passion involved. We are passionate about making the classifieds search experience fundamentally better for users in the UK and beyond. This will help us towards that vision.”
About Adzuna
Adzuna.co.uk (http://www.adzuna.co.uk) is a search engine for classified ads which makes it easier for you to find the right job locally – and soon properties and cars too. We search thousands of sites so you don’t have to, bring together millions of ads so you can find them all in one place, and organize them with useful features so that you can easily find what you need.
Adzuna founders Andrew Hunter and Doug Monro met working at Gumtree in 2005. They stayed in the local internet space for the next 5 years and finally hatched the Adzuna plan in 2010 on the back of an envelope in a central London pub. The site was launched in July 2011.
Doug Monro was most recently COO of property portal Zoopla, leading the growth of the team from 5 to 75 people and the site to number 2 in UK property with 5M visitors a month. Previously he was MD of Gumtree.com, the UK’s largest classified ads site, and has worked for eBay UK, Bain & Co and Unilever. He has a BA in English from Cambridge and an MBA with distinction from Kellogg.
Andrew Hunter was mostly recently VP Marketing and General Manager of local review site Qype, where he grew the site from 0-17m monthly unique visitors in 2 years. Before Qype, Andrew was Head of Marketing at Gumtree.com and ran Search Marketing for the Thomas Cook Group. Andrew has a BSc in Business & Economics from Oxford Brookes University.
About Index Ventures
Index Ventures is a leading venture capital firm specializing in investments in information technology and life sciences companies. The firm invests in seed, early and growth stage start-ups across US and Europe. Since its inception in 1996, Index Ventures has backed visionary entrepreneurs who have taken on incumbents and built seminal companies in a number of growth sectors including: open source software companies such as MySQL, Trolltech, Zend and Pentaho; broadband and VOIP companies such as Virata, Skype, FON and Rebtel; Internet service companies such as Dropbox, Path, Betfair, Oanda, Last.fm, SpotRunner, Lovefilm, Stardoll and Netvibes; and life science companies such as Genmab, ParAllele Biosciences, BioXell, 7TM Pharma, Addex Pharmaceutical and PanGenetics.
About Passion Capital
Passion Capital (http://passioncapital.com) was established in March 2011 by Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero with the aim of becoming the premier early stage digital media and technology investment firm in the UK. The partners have more than 50 years’ collective experience in entrepreneurial, founding and executive operational roles in technology firms.
About The Accelerator Group (TAG)
Based in London, The Accelerator Group (TAG) has been an investor in early stage and start-up companies since 1995. They focus on the Internet services, eCommerce and multi-channel retail sectors, investing primarily in the US and Europe. TAG’s current investments include: Moo, Wonga, Moshi Monsters, Graze, Zoopla, Skimlinks and previously: LoveFilm, Fizzback, Tweetdeck and Dopplr.
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