DFJ Esprit et al. back Trustpilot

Existing investors Index Ventures, Northzone and Seed Capital also took part in the financing round. This latest investment round follows a 117% growth rate for Trustpilot's reviewer base, with in excess of five million online shoppers currently posting reviews on the site.

Trustpilot will use the fresh funding to expand into new markets and continue improving its online reviews for consumers. The company has recently opened new offices in New York and London.

Trustpilot stated it is now providing in excess of 70,000 e-commerce businesses with TrustScores based on more than six million reviews, adding 2,000 new merchants and more than 300,000 new consumers to the community every month.

The investors that took part in the series-C round have participated in four previous funding rounds. Seed Capital and existing shareholders injected DKK 5.5m into Trustpilot in January 2011. Northzone, along with Seed Capital, first provided €3.3m of expansion capital to Trustpilot in November 2011.

Northzone Venture acquired an additional 11% stake in Trustpilot from Danish governmental seed investment vehicle DTU Symbion Innovation in November 2012. This round of investment brought Northzone's holding in Trustpilot close to 35% post transaction, making it one of the two leading investors in the company.

In December 2012, Index Ventures joined existing investors Seed Capital and Northzone as they injected another €10m into the Copenhagen-based company.

DFJ has previously invested in Skype, which was co-founded by Danish entrepreneur Janus Friis.

Company
Trustpilot was established by CEO Peter Mühlmann in Denmark in 2007 and has a presence in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and the US. Trustpilot employs 160 people across its Copenhagen, London and New York offices.

The company sources reviews in two ways: through review invitations that are sent directly to online consumers by Trustpilot, and through end-user contributions on the Trustpilot portal. Businesses using the service can back-track customer reviews to the transactions on which the reviews are based.

Trustpilot's customers include Travelocity, Mazuma Mobile, B&H, lastminute.com, Express Watches and ebookers. The company also contributes reviews to Google Shopping and Google's seller rating programme.

People
Krishna Visvanathan worked on the deal for DFJ Esprit. Peter Holten Mühlmann is the founder and CEO of Trustpilot. Incisive Media CEO Tim Weller is a non-executive chairman of Trustpilot.

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