LivingSocial Raises $25M from U.S. Venture Partners and Grotech

LivingSocial, a Washington DC-based provider of retail discounts to consumers, raised $25 million in venture funding from venture capital firms U.S. Venture Partners and Grotech. Grotech had initially provided LivingSocial with $5 million in expansion capital in 2008 to help get it going. LivingSocial links its members with deals on hotels, restaurants, events and products that are of interest to them. It competes with several other similar services such as Groupon, which is bigger and has more funding (recently raised $30 million from Accel and others). LivingSocial plans to use the funding to expand into 4 new markets, including Chicago, Denver and San Diego. This will bring their coverage to 13 markets, compared to Groupon’s 26.