The Korean e-commerce site Coupang has raised a whopping 1 billion dollars from Softbank.
With this, the company joins the exclusive bunch of unicorns (firms with valuations over 1 billion dollars), and an even more exclusive group that have raised such a sum in a single round.
Coupang shows impressive statistics with 25 million mobile downloads among Korea’s population of 50 million. Mobile users account for 75% of total revenue and 85% of total traffic for the company.
The company has a mind for both efficiency and customer service as it has its own “Coupang men” rather than a third party delivery services. These workers are known to occasionally give freebies such as candy and samples or even Thank You notes to customers.
“Coupang is one of the fastest-growing and most disruptive Internet companies in the world. [It] is setting a new standard for how e-commerce can and should be done across the globe with its innovative technologies and approach to same-day delivery, mobile commerce, and customer service,” said Nikesh Arora, the former Googler who is vice chairman at SoftBank, in a statement.
Coupang founder and CEO Bom Kim told TechCrunch that, though the company raised $1 billion, it still has significant cash in the bank. He also believes that there’s a lot more to come. Although, the confirmed valuation is yet to be released, a source has revealed it to be $5 billion.
“The global e-commerce industry is still at such an early stage,” he said in an interview. “We have a chance to build a next-generation company — one of the great companies — and this investment allows us to make bold investments in both mobile and logistics.”
Source: Tech Crunch
