Yelp, which made a reputation for itself giving restaurant recs, simply purchased an auto providers web site.
Within the firm’s earnings report on Thursday, Yelp revealed that it agreed to purchase RepairPal, a web site for automobile restore estimates, for $80 million in money. The acquisition is anticipated to shut by the tip of the yr, topic to customary closing situations.
“We imagine RepairPal will speed up our broader providers efforts by increasing our choices within the multi-billion greenback U.S. auto providers promoting vertical,” Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp’s co-founder and CEO, mentioned in an announcement.
Whereas it won’t look like an apparent marriage, RepairPal suits into Yelp’s ambition to turn into a serious house providers funnel.
In recent times, Yelp has added performance past restaurant and enterprise search instruments, like an AI-powered function that means plumbers, repairmen, and different house service suppliers to customers probably in want of them. Yelp has additionally launched applications like Yelp Assured, which presents as much as $2,500 of protection for qualifying tasks in case of issues.
Yelp makes cash by means of charges it receives from service suppliers for sure leads — and thru advertisements. Within the firm’s most up-to-date fiscal quarter (Q3 2024), promoting income from providers companies elevated 11% year-over-year to a document $228 million, with income development of round 15% within the house providers class alone.
In its shareholder letter, Yelp says that RepairPal generated roughly $30 million in income and was roughly break-even on money and web revenue.
“We imagine there are clear synergies between Yelp and RepairPal,” the letter reads. “RepairPal brings deep data of auto repairs and pricing, which we will leverage to enhance our choices for auto providers companies. Additionally they preserve a sturdy associate community, together with CarMax, USAA, and Endurance Car Providers. In the meantime, Yelp has a big shopper viewers and experience in areas like SEO, search engine advertising and marketing, and AI, which we imagine will present worth to RepairPal going ahead.”
The acquisition is a pleasant exit for San Francisco-based RepairPal, which managed to boost $21.3 million in funding from Vehicles.com, Tugboat Ventures, and others within the 17 years because the firm’s founding. In its press launch, Yelp didn’t say whether or not founders Aaron Tavistock, David Esser, and David Sturtz can be becoming a member of Yelp company.
A Yelp spokesperson later confirmed to TechCrunch that every one RepairPal staff, together with the management (however not the founders, who now not head the corporate), can be becoming a member of Yelp.