Viadeo Raises 24 Million EUR

Viadeo, the French parent company for ApnaCircle, and the closest competitor to LinkedIn announced today the realization of a fundraising round of 24 Million EUR. This is believed to be the largest European Tech investment in the past 12 months. Viadeo is currently the world's 2nd largest PSN after LinkedIn is still a leader in France and China. Its Indian partner company ApnaCircle is the leading Business and Career Networking site in the country.
The fundraising round was through a pool of investors to boost its growth in the emerging markets like China, India etc. The whole group through which this raiser was realized consists of French Sovereign Wealth Fund, Allianz, Jefferies, Middle Eastern private funds, and its existing institutional shareholders, Idinvest and Ventech. Dan Serfaty the CEO of Viadeo which is headquartered in Paris had this to say:


We're a global society where critical business connections span multiple languages, geographies and cultures. We have always been laser-focused on our 'multi-local' approach, which goes beyond simple translation and focuses on catering to, and understanding the business and cultural needs of each market. This approach has awarded us tremendous growth and success in both European and emerging markets.


As is quite visible the focus is n a multi-local approach which saw Viadeo making in roads in to the China market through Tianji and Indian local market through their leader ApnaCircle. Both companies seems to making a very fast progress based on the business model followed by the Viadeo group as a whole. Tianji has been in particular making quite a progress with its total user base at 10Mn and it went from 100, 000 to 500, 000 user per month. The fund raiser will surely be a boost for the group(especially in the emerging countries as already specified), but what remains to be seen is the strategy that Viadeo and its partner companies would be adapting in order to compete with LinkedIn, who is by far the leader in the Professional Networking arena with around 150 million users as of Feb 2012.
Dan Serfaty has already hinted that the company is currently not looking to go public. The plans for an initial offering were already left out at May last year to focus on the emerging markets expansion. The news of Viadeo IPO was in circulation when LinkedIn went public some time back. It will however be interested to see if the strategy now is also being around the matter.

While LinkedIn was making all news since some time, its to be noted that Viadeo group has seen a raise in its total member base. The count is now at 45 million as can be seen from the signup or registration page of the site. The group is to be noted has been profitable since 2009 and have offices in France(Paris), US(San Francisco), China(Beijing), India(New Delhi), Spain (Madrid & Barcelona), Italy (Milan), Russia (Moscow), Mexico (Mexico City) and Senegal (Dakar). As a groups the company houses a staff of around 400 people.