meinKauf secures €1,5 million investment

Buy two, get a third one for free. Today only: 20 percent off. Sale, sale, sale! Landing a good deal makes us feel good and thanks to modern technology, offers and discounts are easily accessible online.

Austrian startup meinKauf, an online platform that digitalises leaflets and offers, has announced a 1,5-million-euro investment from German media house Vogel Business Media, as well as from several business angels, among whom Michael Brehm and Florian Arnold. The round also includes financing from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), which the startup secured in June, for the duration of a year. 

Previously, meinKauf has received funding from business angels Brehm, Werner Wutscher as well as from Alps Ventures, the founders of Amiando, and more, who invested a total of 750.000 euros in a seed round.

Research online, purchase offline  

“Consumers have changed their information behaviour,” said CEO Markus Pichler, “about 72% of the Austrian population do their research online before a purchase.” With meinKauf, consumers can avoid checking their actual post boxes for (mostly irrelevant) leaflets.

Since meinKauf first started as an online platform in December 2011, it has made available more than 1 million product offers and has about 300.000 users a month. By now, consumers can also use their smartphones and tablets to find out about deals around them. The startup has information from more than 300 retail businesses as well as offers of some 22.000 producers in Austria, Turkey, and Hungary.

“Our concept is based on the ROPO effect (research online, purchase offline),” said Pichler. “Retailers currently pay per delivered [virtual] leaflet, and receive a monthly report of delivery and usage of their offers.” What’s more, digital technology keeps the environment a tad cleaner. 

What’s next?

At the beginning of this year, meinKauf stepped foot on the Turkish and Hungarian markets. Since March, the startup has been operating in those countries under the name of mikunu. The team now has 27 members in Austria, four in Turkey and two in Hungary.

Besides expanding further, the team wants to work on product innovation. “The next big thing for meinKauf is to develop data-driven software to individualise retailers’ offers,” Pichler told inventures.eu.

meinKauf’s plan is to “reinvent” their platform to a new location-based marketing tool for retail. In November, the website as well as the apps will be re-launched and users should be able to get notified about current offers interesting to them.

With that in mind, meinKauf is expected to be profitable by the beginning of 2014.