Zip.ch receives financial injection

The company founded in March 2015 Zip.ch aims to gain one third of the traffic of the Swiss online directories within a short time, thanks to its free referencing services dedicated to both individuals and companies. The new version of Zip.ch is scheduled to be launched in June this year. The revenues will come mainly from advertising and premium offers.

Businesses and self-employed people can improve their visibility on the Internet and their referencing, since the directory offer is much more extensive than that offered today by the competitor, which enjoys a near monopoly.

After an in-depth market study on online directories and the unsatisfactory offer of historical providers, a group of investors close to the Swiss family office Colombo has decided to contribute to the development of Zip.ch. According to the statement, the group of investors is convinced that Zip.ch will quickly become a reference in the market of Swiss online directories thanks to its revolutionary offers, better adapted to customer expectations.

Alexandre de Senger, founder and CEO of Zip.ch, adds: "By attracting capital investors of this quality, we are significantly increasing our development capacity. We will completely redefine this market by offering a "freemium" model that is much more advantageous for SMEs and finally offers them an alternative to Local.ch and Search.ch."

Thanks to the capital raise, Zip.ch now has the financial resources to realize its goals and counter Swisscom Directories' dominance of the Swiss online directories market, the statement added. The operators criticize the Decision of the Weko, to have approved the merger of Local.ch and Search.ch in March 2015, for which Swisscom and Tamedia were responsible, even though this had created a dominant market position.

New version soon online

In the next few weeks, a version with a new design and display advertising will go online. Then, this summer, a new version will be launched that will allow users - both individuals and entrepreneurs - to control their data. Thus, they will be able to add a description of their activity for free, choose their headings, indicate opening hours, list the address of their home page or links to their social networks. This is to compete with the powerful competitors. For comparison mentions Zip.chThe company is not aware of the fact that simply adding a company's URL to its competitor Local.ch is charged at 420 francs per year. (pd/hae)