mySupermarket has received a funding boost from Greylock Partners, the venture capital company that backed Facebook. Greylock, together with Pitango Venture Capital in Israel, have invested $6m in mySupermarket.co.uk – an independent grocery price comparison web site in the UK.
MySupermarket compares the price of groceries of four main online supermarkets; Ocado (Waitrose), Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s. The site is free to use and allow shoppers to fill an online trolley with products from highly visual shelves that resemble supermarket aisles.
The grocery site then shows how much the same trolley would cost on other supermarket web sites as well as recommending special deals that might have been missed. Shoppers can then buy online and arrange for home delivery, or just use the information to find the the best deals on the high street.
Greylock Partners, who also invested in the internet advertising company Doubleclick, have paid $6m for a minority stake in the supermarket web site together with Israel-based Pitango Venture Capital. The funding will be used for internet marketing to raise the site‘s profile and also encourage current users to try out different tools on the site. mySupermarket currently has 140,000 regular users, but has yet to start a marketing campaign.
Director Johnny Stern said that the grocery web site had been approached by a number of grocery companies interested in investing in mySupermarket, but had rejected them in order to retain its independence.