Internet Dating Investments

Online Dating Start-up TwoMangoes Raises Angel Funding

VC CIRCLE - Feb 21 - Targeted at South Asians globally, TwoMangoes has launched its India operations a couple of weeks ago. TwoMangoes has raised an undisclosed angel funding from Andy Jasuja, the co-founder, chairman & CEO of Sigma Systems, an IP solutions services company. The dating portal will use the funds to scale up its user base and develop mobile and Internet apps to reach out to more people. The funds are expected to last for about a year and after that, the firm will be looking to raise series A funding of about $3M.vThe company already has a presence in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia and the UAE.

by Nandana Das
See full article at VC Circle

This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.

Anotherfriend.com Buys MaybeFriends.com

OPW - Feb 8 - WebDev Ltd, the Internet company behind the largest Irish dating site www.anotherfriend.com has acquired the Irish dating site, www.maybefriends.com from the Saon Group for an undisclosed sum. AnotherFriend.com currently has ~60% market share of the Irish Online Dating market, with over 12.8M page impressions and 290K unique visitors monthly.

Internet Dating Company Prices

IDS - Feb 3 - I promised attendees of the Internet Dating Conference that we'd run a list of dating sites that have been sold in the past along with the prices. Here they are. Just click on internet Dating Acquisitions on the left bar if you'd like to reference it in future.

Youja.cn Secures $3m USD Series A Funding

PENN OLSEN - Jan 17 - China dating app U+ (Youja.cn) has secured $3m USD series A funding from VC funds at UMC Capital, The9 and World Trend Ventures. The funds will be used to improve service speed and grow membership further. U+ was set up by serial entrepreneurs who previously founded business social network Wealink.com and Mobile Software developer Vogins.

by Willis Wee
See full article at Penn Olsen

Mark Brooks: One to watch. Youja has a strong founder pedigree and is inspired by the best of the mobile dating apps in the West. Especially Skout, Flirtomatic and Badoo.

This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.

Welcome To InternetDatingInvestments.com

IDI - Jan 13 - This site is a sister site to Online Personals Watch. We'll illuminate the news that is most interesting to people with money invested in internet dating companies. So we'll run summaries of news about public companies, acquisitions, funding rounds and anything else we think would be interesting for you. - Mark Brooks

Jiayuan.com Flirting With Disaster

THE STREET - Jan 6 - Jiayuan.com is a very popular dating site in China. However, like most of the Chinese Internet space, the shares have been pummeled recently, falling by more than 70% from 2011 highs. RenRen, which many investors felt would bottom out at $5.00, now trades at just over $3.00. On Dec. 21, Jiayuan hit an all-time low of $5.50, prompting management to announce a share buyback program of up to $10M. The share price immediately jumped as much as 20% to over $6.50. However, the initial enthusiasm has proven to be short lived and the share price has drifted back down to the $5 to $6 range once again.

by Rick Pearson
See full article at The Street

Mark Brooks: JiaYuan IPO'd in May 2011 at $11, peaked at $16.12 and now runs $5.80 with a P/E ratio of 167. Clearly, a bet on JiaYuan is a bet on the future. 

JiaYuan revenues, profits and the number of paying members are healthy.  They're profitable with well over a million paying members and over 40% market share and  See our financial summary here http://www.onlinepersonalswatch.com/news/jiayuan-financials.html.

They launched in 2003. See all news since 2004 in summary format here http://www.onlinepersonalswatch.com/news/jiayuancom/.

I interviewed the CEO, Rose Gong, in July 2011, see http://www.onlinepersonalswatch.com/news/2011/07/jiayuan-ceo-interview-rose-gongs-founding-story-of-jiayuan-and-the-secret-to-her-success.html.

Ignighter Fires Up $1.8M

CITY BIZ - Jan 6 - Group dating site Ignighter has raised $1.8M of a targeted $2.4M from six investors. Previously, the company raised $2.7M of a $3.1M offering from 25 investors. Ignighter launched in NYC in August of 2008 and has users in 28 countries.

by Richard Rabicoff
See full article at City Biz

IAC/Interactive, Barry Diller Pursue Online Dates

INVESTOR.COM - Dec 8 - The company's acquisition in May of Europe's Meetic.com, and its purchase of a 20% stake in China's Zhenai in September, are the latest confirmations that IAC and Diller covet online dating. For Meetic, IAC spent 15 Eur ($21), a share to boost its ownership to 80% from 27%. The shares, traded on the Euronext Paris exchange, were valued at 13.50 at the time, so IAC paid a 56% premium. IAC's dating sites are among its most profitable assets, says Needham & Co. analyst Kerry Rice. In the Q3, IAC reported that its online dating revenue rose 25% to $132.3M.

by Kevin Shalvey
See full article at Investor.com

eÇift.com Scores 3 Million Euro Round Of Funding

UNQUOTE.COM - Dec 2 - 3TS Capital Partners, the Growth Capital Investor for Central and Eastern Europe, invests in Elit Teknoloji, the owner of eÇift.com the market leading Turkish dating site. eÇift will receive 3M Euro. eÇift was established in 2009 by serial entrepreneurs Tamer and Akgün Kulmaç and Janset Çelik to serve Turkish speaking users looking for a serious relationship. In 2010 the business received equity financing from business angels; participants included b-to-v Partners AG, Parship.de co-founder Konstantin Urban and Hotel.de founder Stefan Morschheuser. By now eÇift became the leading Turkish language dating platform with ~1.5M registered users and cash-flow positive operation.

See full article at Unquote.com

HowAboutWe Raises $15 Million Series B Round

BUSINESS INSIDER - Nov 18 - HowAboutWe has just raised a $15M Series B round led by Khosla Ventures with participation from RRE, FF Ventures and some angels. On HowAboutWe users post what they want to do on a date and then see if there are any takers. HowAboutWe launched in April 2010. They raised a $3.2M Series A round led by RRE in September 2010.

by Alyson Shontell
See full article at SF Gate