South Korea’s Coupan, the fast-growing e-commerce firm, will receive an investment of US$2 billion from the SoftBank Vision Fund. The funding follows SoftBank Group’s initial investment of $1 billion in June 2015. The new round of capital will enable Coupang to continue investing in consumer-first technologies.
Lydia Jett, partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers and a Coupang board member, said the company Coupang wants to have “a revolutionary technology platform and uncompromising focus on customer delight”.
“We believe the company is well-positioned to lead the Korean e-commerce market, with significant platform opportunities ahead given its data, payments and logistics advantage.”
With revenue more than doubling in the last two years and approaching $5 billion this year, Coupang is Korea’s largest online retailer with more than 120 million items for sale and 4 million available for guaranteed one-day delivery.
Millions of customers buy from Coupang more than 50 times per year, and one in every two Koreans has downloaded Coupang’s mobile application.
Coupang CEO Bom Kim said: “At Coupang, we are obsessed with making customers’ lives easier.
We’re excited to continue our partnership with SoftBank. We are confident this investment will allow us to leverage the platforms we have created in logistics, payments, and data to make e-commerce and other innovations even more indispensable to our customers.”