Online dating app Coffee Meets Bagel has raised $12 million in funding from a United Kingdom-based venture capital firm and a group of women investors.
The round was led by new investor Atami Capital. Other backers include GingerBread Capital, led by Linnea Roberts; Shannon Gran;, Kheng Lian Ho and Helen Schwab, as well as return investors DCM Ventures, Wi Harper and Quest Venture Partners, per a company news release.
Coffee Meets Bagel co-founder and co-CEO Arum Kang said the funds will be used for growth and innovation at the company, which says it has already generated more than 2.5 billion introductions that led to more than 50,000 happy couples.
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The partnership with Atami Capital adds international connections as the company explores opportunities in markets beyond the United States for 2018.
“We’re excited for the next phase of Coffee Meets Bagel and are pleased to have some wonderful international and female investors on board. Given our focus on female experience, it was very important that we have a female perspective at the investor level,” Kang said.
This capitalization round brings the total raised by the San Francisco-based company to nearly $20 million since 2012. In February 2016, Coffee Meets Bagel raised $7.8 million in a round led by DCM Ventures.
Coffee Meets Bagel was founded in 2012 by sisters Dawoon, Arum and Soo Kang, who were inspired to create a dating app that was more woman-centric. The site really took off in early 2015 when the sisters pitched their app on Shark Tank and turned down a $30 million offer from investor Mark Cuban, per Forbes.
Matches on the site are called “bagels,” and app users can earn “coffee beans,” which are used like currency.
Under the app’s #LadiesChoice option, men are presented each day at noon with 21 “bagels,” which they can either “like” or pass. Women can then choose who they want to contact from among the men who have “liked” them, or they can use the site’s “discover” option to choose from among all users.
The site has a 60/40 female/male user ratio.
CMB Experiences, launched earlier this year, is the company’s latest initiative to bring people together. Under the program, Coffee Meets Bagel plans activities where participants can go meet someone new; for example, in May, the company held an all-inclusive sleep-away camp in New York City attended by 150 adults.
The company also plans to work with small-concert curator Sofar Sounds to plan monthly Coffee Meets Bagel events in the form of monthly concerts in New York. Anne Stych is a freelance writer in Charlotte, North Carolina.
