Groupalia Collective Purchase is an online company offering local leisure, travel, services and products. Founded in Barcelona in May 2010, it currently operates in Spain and Italy, with two independent shareholding companies.
Groupalia arises from the initiative of spanish entrepreneurs with experience in the field of e-commerce who decides to found this new platform by copying the Groupon success model that was born in Chicago in November 2008. Groupalia It has its headquarters in the 22@ district of Barcelona and its first two years it shared an office with , a company with which it shared shareholders. Although it is currently known as such, Groupalia was not its original name, its first name was Outbees: the company was even called “Outbees Venta Online SL” although shortly after it was changed to the current “Groupalia Compra Colectiva”.
In fact, the first shareholders that participate in the company since its inception are: Lucas Carne and Jose Manuel Villanuevafounders of , Marcel Rafartfounder of Nauta Capital, Caixa Capital Risk, of LaCaixa and Joaquin Engel. The company was born after the arrival of Spain through the purchase of City Deal and the launch of Letsbonus in September 2008, with which it was the third player in dispute.
What is Groupalia: a brilliant development
Groupalia was born in May 2010 and in July 2010 it opens its first subsidiary in Italy. Since then, the company is managed by one of its founders, , who had developed his professional career at Agrolimen in the Strategy and M&A department. He joined the management team in November 2012 as COO, who would remain in the company until June 2012 and who would later join Airbnb as a director.
Between August 2010 and July 2011 they open branches in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Colombia. In April 2011 the company obtains new investors: General Atlantic, Insight Venture Partners and Index Ventures. Barely four months later, a new capital increase was carried out for a value of €18 million.
This financing comes from the shareholders that founded Groupalia (Nauta Capital, Caixa Capital Risc, Lucas Carné and José Manuel Villanueva) together with the three venture capital funds that became part of the shareholders last April: General Atlantic, Insight, Venture Partners and Index Ventures
In May 2011, he expands his business to sell products as well as services. In March 2012, it gets rid of all its Latin American subsidiaries and sells its entire operation to the Brazilian operator Peixe Urbano. and focuses on its operations in Spain and Italy
2012: a new CEO at Groupalia
In May 2012, a new CEO joined, with extensive experience in the world of business and finance, as well as in the IT sector.
Highlights his recent stint at the multinational PandaSecurity, which he joined in 2006, promoting the technological leadership of the computer security firm worldwide, previously between 1999 and 2006, Santana worked at Lehman Brothers, where he served as Executive Director within the Telecommunications and Technology team in London and in Madrid. Joaquin Engel, founder and CEO since the beginning of the project in May 2010, will continue to be part of the management team and fully involved in the management of the Company.
2013: Italy and Spain separate
In November 2013 Italy and Spain separate shareholding: Groupalia Italy remains in the hands of its former commercial director and country manager Andrea Gualtieri together with Alessandro Gualtieri and Claudio Rota (Pico Group) and Spain remains in the hands of the original investors.
In the same moment Groupalia receives a new to rescue the company for an amount of 3.5 million euros by Nauta Capital, Caixa Capital Risc and Atresmedia, the latter in media for equity, at zero valuation, which implies the departure from the shareholders of Joaquín Engel, Lucas Carné, Jose Manuel Villanueva and the American funds.
This coincides with the departure of Juan Santana as CEO of the company, recovering the management of Groupalia Spain by Joaquin Engel, which had been number two so far. Engel remains in office until April 2014, when he hands over the baton to Albert Bosch, one of the company’s first employees and who had played different roles throughout history.
In January 2014 Groupalia Italia acquires Desiderando.com the first travel coupon site in Italy dedicated to both the final consumer and travel agencies.
Groupalia, a big one in difficulties
However, there were no favorable winds blowing for Groupalia of late. As we learned in December, the company decided to sell its Italian subsidiary (which represented approximately half of its turnover) to concentrate solely on the domestic market. Something significant for a company that, in its barely three years of existence, reached seven million users and subsidiaries in Brazil, Argentina and four other Latin American countries.
3.5 million euros in capital
In this situation, . A solution that came from the hand of The Caixa (through its venture capital section Caixa Capital Risc) and nauta capital, who were already part of the Groupalia shareholding since its inception. In total, the volume of resources contributed amounted to €3.5 millionand included the entry into its capital of one of the main banners of the Spanish audiovisual sector, Atresmediain the form of the very Anglophile “average for equity”. Through this agreement with the parent company of companies as important as Antena 3 or La Sexta, Groupalia guarantees the diffusion of its contents in some of the main audiovisual advertising media in the country.
Groupalia merges with Offerum
In March 2015 Groupalia Spain and merged to create Merchant Digital Services, which will be an online service holding company from which several portals will hang. Merchant Digital Services was launched with the Bellahora portal, specialized in the beauty and cosmetics sector. Merchant Digital Services (MDS) has a board of directors in which the partners of both dotcoms sit. On behalf of Offerum are Cabiedes & Partners, Vicente Arias, Jesús Monleón, Sasha Fuentes; while on the Groupalia side are Caixa Capital Risc, Nauta Capital, Atresmedia and Albert Bosch, director of the portal. The president of MDS will be from Nauta Capital, he would be the new CEO, Jesús Monleón and Vicente Arias will be in charge of the new Bellahora portal and the development of the integration of the two companies.
A few months later, in November 2015, Albert Bosch ceased to be the General Director of Merchant Digital Center, taking over his position, who was the founder of Boutique Secret.
Ofertix buys Groupalia and Offerum
In early February 2016 there was a new movement in the structure of Groupalia,which included the liabilities of both companies and the commitment to reorganize the online coupon sector in Spain, which moves around 200 million euros per year.
Where Groupalia arouses more interest
The cities where Groupalia generates the most interest are Malaga (it is surprising to see it in the first place), Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona, with more than 9,000 monthly searches. It is followed by Seville, Zaragoza, Bilbao, Alicante and Santander, with between 5,000 and 3,000 monthly searches. later: Gijón, Granada, Valladolid, Cadiz, Murcia and Mallorca, with between two thousand and one thousand searches. Córdoba, Las Palmas, Almería, Vitoria and Salamanca move between 500 and 100 searches per month.
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