The largest provider of digital coupons, Coupons.com has received a $200 million investment from institutional investors, the company announced Thursday.
The company plans to use roughly half of the investment to help push the newspaper-dominated coupon market into digital deals as well as expand the coupon industry. It intends to hire 100 new employees before the end of 2011, which will grow its total workforce by more than a third.
Also, $100 million of the funds will go to early investors and employees in a move that’s similar to what online group-deal startup Groupon has done.
The decline of print publications has allowed the 13-year-old company to continue its strategy of pushing vendors to put coupons online instead of distributing them through newspapers.
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The new investment is rumored to boost Coupons.com’s valuation to $1 billion, which would make it the third startup this month speculated to reach that valuation amount — behind social bed and breakfast startup Airbnb and mobile payments startup Square.
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