Back to Blog
Wuala pop7/2/2023 The company’s growth is a useful barometer of just how enduring circular economy marketplaces can be: Buying and selling items from other private owners took on a new profile when COVID-19 was in full bloom. Spain is Wallapop’s home market, but it’s been gradually using that as an anchor to go into adjacent countries, with Italy launching in 2021 and Portugal in September 2022. Naver - the company behind messaging app Line and other holdings - has been making efforts to expand its reach beyond Korea, most notably buying secondhand apparel player Poshmark in the U.S. The latest investment is being led by Naver, the Korean internet company, and Naver’s European investment partner Korelya Capital, which were both in the original Series G.Īccel, 14W and Insight are also participating. This is an inside round, meaning all investors were already backers of Wallapop, which is not uncommon at the moment: The market is tough right now and so it makes sense to turn to existing investors to shore up capital. (In terms of USD, that works out to $832 million at current rates, which is actually lower than its previous dollar-value valuation, because the euro is significantly weaker right now against the dollar.) It says that the figure now stands at €771 million, compared to €690 million previously. Its valuation is up, but only in line with the amount being put in. That was before the bottom fell out of the tech market (and investing dropped along with it), so it is notable that Wallapop has raised here. The company is describing this as an extension to its Series G - a $191 million round that it raised in February 2021. The company also plans to put more into data science and other areas of R&D - critical given that discovery, personalization and other tools to connect buyers with items they want is critical to people coming back and using Wallapop again and again. The company has picked up €81 million ($87.4 million), which it will be investing into its operations in Spain, Italy and Portugal after seeing its 2.4 million downloads in the first half of the year in Italy (a newer market for the app) and a 600% increase in cross-border activity between Spain and Italy in that period. Wallapop - a peer-to-peer marketplace based out of Barcelona that made a splash at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic with consumers who were looking for more localized, less wasteful, and more ecofriendly routes for buying and selling items - has raised more money to continue its expansion in Europe.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |