TechCrunch May 29, 2014
Coupang, South Korea’s answer to Amazon, has raised $100 million in a round of financing led by Sequoia Capital. The investment led by Sequoia chairman Mike Moritz adds one of Asia’s fastest-growing and most valuable startups to Sequoia Capital’s already impressive roster of Asian deals. According to one person with knowledge of the deal, the new investment values Coupang at well over $1 billion. Founded three years ago by Harvard Business School dropout Bom Kim, Coupang now has over $1 billion in sales — a milestone it reached faster than any other Asian e-commerce company.
According to previous reports, Kim had the idea for Coupang after seeing the explosive growth of online retail companies like Groupon in the late 2000s. Realizing that the ship had sailed for a similar company in the U.S. Kim thought that the South Korean market, where shopping is a pastime, mobile phones are everywhere, and high-speed Internet is ubiquitous, would be an ideal country to launch an e-commerce site.