BlackRock PE leads $300m round for Korea’s Coupang

Wellington Management, Greenoaks Capital Management and Rose Park Advisors also participated in the round. They were also among the investors in May 2014, when Coupang raised $100 million, led by Sequoia Capital. The company has also previously received capital from Maverick Capital, LaunchTime and Altos Ventures. The Sequoia round was said to value the business at more than $1 billion.

Coupang was founded in 2010 by Bom Kim, who remains CEO and chairman. The company started out as a Groupon-style service, selling discount deal coupons, but quickly moved into direct retail of physical goods. It sells a wide variety of merchandise - from baby goods to beauty products - and is now the largest online fulfillment operator in Korea, offering same-day delivery nationwide.

Coupang exceeded $1 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) for 2013 - achieving the mark faster than any other company in the world - and is currently operating at an annualized run rate of over $2.2 billion. The company's mobile platform accounts for 70% of revenue and 80% of total traffic. Mobile GMV alone has already reached $1 billion for 2014 to date. It is unclear whether Coupang has achieved profitability.

This new financing will be used to strengthen the company's service offering and also expand the engineering and R&D teams in the Silicon Valley, Seattle, Shanghai and Seoul offices.

"Coupang is one of Korea's largest and fastest-growing e-commerce companies," said Jay Park, managing director at BlackRock. "Its differentiated same-day service model, deep mobile expertise, and precedent-setting online commerce offering, make Coupang an e-commerce leader to watch - not only in Korea but globally."

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• Topics
• Consumer
• Technology
• North Asia
• Expansion
• South Korea
• Consumer
• TMT
• Growth capital
• BlackRock