Benchmark in $22.5m round for Zenly

Alice Tchernookova
28 September 2016

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American VC firm Benchmark has taken part in a $22.5m funding round for French app developer Zenly.

The round was led by Benchmark, whose general partner Peter Fenton will take a seat on the company's board. Fenton is a prominent Silicon Valley figure who holds shares in Twitter and Yelp.

Jerry Murdock, co-founder of Insight Venture Partners and ex-managing director of the firm until April 2011, made a personal investment in the round, unquote" understands. Insight itself, however, was not involved in the deal.

Existing investor Idinvest also backed the round alongside Kima Ventures, the venture capital fund of French entrepreneur Xavier Niel, who founded Free Telecoms.

According to various media sources, the funding round was raised within one month. In total, the startup has raised at least €30m in funding since 2015, not including an undisclosed seed funding investment made by Kima that year.

With the fresh capital, Zenly will further develop its app, adding new layers of data intended to make its mapping more precise. The startup is also planning to open an office in San Francisco and bolster the engineering teams in its two French offices.

Previous funding
In June 2015, Kima provided an undisclosed round of seed funding to Zenly. In March 2016, the business raised an additional €10m in a funding round led by Idinvest and Kima, with each VC committing an estimated €3m.

Company
Established in 2011, Paris-based Zenly develops an application allowing smartphone users to locate their friends in real time on a map. The app is currently free of charge and users can choose to hide their location at any point. The founders of Zenly previously launched a similar venture, Alert.us, targeting parents who want to keep track of their children's whereabouts.

Zenly has a headcount of 35 and an estimated two million users around the world.

People
Kima Ventures – Jean de La Rochebrochard (partner).
Zenly – Antoine Martin, Alexis Bonillo (co-founders).