Groupalia, a Spanish Groupon clone group buying service provider, has raised €2.5 million in its first institutional round. The financing comes from Nauta Capital, who led the round with an investment of €805,000, and Spanish bank la Caixa who contributed €250,000.
The rest comes from individual investors, namely Lucas Carné and Jose Manuel Villanueva (the founders of Privalia, another Nauta portfolio company) with an investment of €660,000, and Groupalia CEO Joaquin Engel (€125,000).
Groupalia is a site that features a daily deal, in the form of a discount coupon, on the best things to do, see, eat and buy in the cities where it is present. Judging from its website, that means only Madrid and Barcelona so far, with Bilbao, Málaga, Palma de Mallorca, Sevilla, Valencia and Zaragoza underway.
The startup also plans to expand into Italy, Brazil and Mexico at a later stage.
The leisure services included in the daily deals range from restaurants, spas, gym, to events and much more. Discounts on retail prices are said to range from 40% to 60%. The deal is sold through a coupon that buyers receive by e‐mail, print and hand in to suppliers on the day of consumption, with expiration ranging from 6 to 12 months.
These sites just keep popping up like mushrooms just about everywhere.
Can’t help but wonder how many of these will turn out to be viable businesses.
