Marketplace / Money - Edition 11
1st July 2024
Welcome to Marketplace / Money. A regular round-up of happenings in the marketplace space and its intersection with the investment world (VC & PE).
About the Author: I’m Thomas Hamper, a former investment banker who’s spent the past decade building, scaling & transforming marketplace businesses. Based in London (mostly!).
Platform Activity
TikTok Shop owner ByteDance (China) has a challenger to the crown of world’s most valuable startup - Elon Musk’s SpaceX (Hawthorne, CA) last week launched a secondary share sale at a $210bn valuation
Amazon (Seattle, WA) has announced it’s launching a direct-from-China Marketplace, in direct competition with Temu, Shein and AliExpress
Amazon Business has added a suite of additional functionality for enterprise buyers. The B2B Marketplace, launched in 2015, has grown to $35bn annual GMV and counts 96 of the Fortune 100 as customers
Meanwhile the tech giant is facing a fresh £2.7bn lawsuit, filed on behalf of 200,000 sellers on its UK Marketplace, alleging anti-competitive practises
There’s been an avalanche of Marketplace M&A:
Leading PE buyout investor EQT (Stockholm) has sold real estate marketplace Idealista (Madrid) to fellow PE house Cinven (London) for €2.9bn, having acquired the company for €1.3bn in 2020. EQT retains an 18% stake, fellow PE investors Oakley Capital and Apax Partners (both London) have cashed out entirely
Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group (London) agreed to buy the luxury goods portfolio of e-commerce group THG (Manchester, formerly known as The Hut Group)
Klarna (Stockholm), the BNPL pioneer and marketplace enabler valued by VCs at nearly $8bn, is selling its ‘Checkout’ business for $520mn to an investor consortium led by entrepreneur Kamjar Hajabdolahi
Baltic PE Livonia Partners (Riga) has exited corporate wellness benefits marketplace Stebby (Tartu) in a trade sale to Up Coop (Paris)
Staytuned (New York, NY), a Shopify tools developer, is merging with Zendrop (Austin, TX), a developer of e-commerce fulfilment software
bitFlyer (japan), a Bitcoin marketplace, is in talks to buy FTX Japan, per Japanese news outlet NHK
Tech-focused PE buyout giant Thoma Bravo (Chicago, IL) is considering a sale of car marketplace TRADER (Toronto) that could fetch C$4bn, per Bloomberg
Doordash (San Francisco, CA) recently approached online food delivery player Deliveroo (London) about an acquisition, but talks broke down over valuation, Reuters reports
Online retailers using Shopify in the US can now make their products available on Target (Minneapolis, MN)’s ‘Plus’ marketplace, the 5th largest in North America by GMV
More than 30,000 MSMEs selling on Alibaba (China)’s marketplace are now using its AI tooling to help run their businesses, according to the marketplace giant
Getir (Istanbul) has agreed a restructuring deal that will break-up the company and see a $250mn capital injection led by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, according to the Financial Times. The formerly $12bn-valued company will be split into its Turkish grocery delivery business - which Mubadala will control - and a separate entity containing all other assets. Getir recently shuttered all its businesses outside Turkey and made layoffs in a large-scale downsizing
Investments
Rohlik (Prague), an online grocery delivery player serving multiple Central European markets, has closed €160mn in debt & equity financing led by the EBRD, taking total fundraising to €800mn
Route (Lehi, UT), an online order tracking & insurance platform for consumers, raised a $40mn Series C at a $1.4bn valuation led by Hanaco VC
FirstVet (Stockholm), a marketplace connecting pet owners & vets, raised a €20mn Series C round led by TELUS Global Ventures
Zyod (Gurugram), a B2B apparel manufacturing marketplace, raised an $18mn Series A round led by RTP Global
The Lasso (New York, NY), a used car marketplace connecting individual sellers with dealers, raised $5mn in additional seed funding led by Manresa Ventures, bringing total seed capital raised to $9.9mn
Trampoline (London), a B2B home decoration marketplace, raised a $5mn seed round co-led by Matrix Partners India and WaterBridge Ventures
Created by Humans (San Francisco Bay Area, CA), a platform allowing authors to license their work for use in AI models, raised $5mn in seed funding from multiple investors
Tengo (Paris), a public sector procurement platform, raised €3mn led by Point Nine
BoxedUp (Seattle, WA), an e-commerce software platform for equipment rental companies, raised a $2.8mn seed round led by Lavrock Ventures
LoopFX (London), a P2P FX trading marketplace, raised £2.6mn from Augmentum Fintech
MarketSizer (Dublin), a data platform helping businesses size potential markets, raised €1mn in pre-seed funding led by Delta Partners
Fundraising
Shein (Singapore/China), a fast-fashion retailer and marketplace operator, filed confidentially for its much-anticipated London IPO. However, the company is coming under pressure from UK politicians and activists regarding its labour practices, per Axios
Another Chinese fast-fashion company Urban Revivo is considering a Hong Kong IPO, according to Bloomberg
Two fabled Silicon Valley VCs with marketplace pedigree are raising significant war chests:
Kleiner Perkins (portfolio has included Amazon, JD.com, AirBnB) has raised $825mn for an early-stage fund and $1.2bn for a late-stage counterpart
Benchmark Capitsl (portfolio has included eBay, Uber, Zipcar) is in the market to raise $425mn for its 11th fund, according to Forbes
Food for Thought…
In the first edition of a two-part interview series with Digital Commerce 360, Patrick McGovern, Senior Associate at dedicated B2B marketplace VC Bowery Capital (New York, NY), shares his insights into the current state of marketplace investing and where future winners may come from…
Sources
TechCrunch, Sifted, Axios, StrictlyVC, LinkedIn, Digital Commerce 360, Marketplace Pulse, Klarna, NHK, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Reuters, Private Equity News, Forbes
Disclaimer
Information shared is non-exhaustive and from publicly available sources, accuracy and completeness not guaranteed. Views my own.