Alex Chesterman, founder of Zoopla, is one of the nominees for Entrepreneur of the Year.

The annual award, run by City AM, recognises entrepreneurs nationally.

This year’s nominees are Chesterman; Julie Deane, of the Cambridge Satchel Co; Rowan Gormley, of Naked Wines; Nick Hungerford, of Nutmen, an online wealth manager; and Lance Uggla, of Markit, a financial information provider.

The citation for Chesterman claims that Zoopla has more members than Rightmove.

It is not known what current exact numbers are for each site, but in Rightmove’s latest half-yearly results it said it had 18,995 agency and new homes advertisers, plus 1,797 overseas advertisers – making 20,792.

Back in May, Zoopla said it had “about 20,000” agents and developers to whom it was offering discounted shares.

The citation reads: “Chief executive of the property portal Zoopla, Alex Chesterman can claim a number of recent successes.

“The company he founded in 2007 floated earlier this year, valued at £919m. And buoyed by a resurgent property market, in the four months to July 2014, Zoopla saw a 34% year-on-year increase in monthly visits to 45.5m.

“With more members than rival Rightmove, Zoopla is at the forefront of the internet’s challenge to traditional estate agent models, giving consumers greater power to compare agents’ offerings.

“Chesterman previously co-founded Lovefilm, which he sold to Amazon for £200m.”