Yelp, a New York-listed website to review shops and restaurants, has acquired Qype, a Germany-based peer backed by mobile phone operator Vodafone’s corporate venturing unit.
Yelp is paying $50m, made up of €18.6m ($24m) in cash and 970,000 class A shares of its stock.
Alongside Vodafone Ventures among Qype’s investors are venture capital firms Advent Venture Partners, Federal Finance, Oddo Asset Management, Partech International, Truffle Capital and Wellington Partners.
In November 2010, Vodafone Ventures invested €3.5m ($4.7m) in Qype.
Vodafone was then a new member of Qype’s syndicate, with a further €3m invested by its previous venture capital backers, Advent Venture Partners, Partech International and Wellington Partners.
The three VCs had previously invested €8m in Qype’s series A round in September 2008 after €5m of seed funding since its launch in 2005 by Stephan Uhrenbacher.