Coupang Korea - the biggest and fastest growing Company - by @alfredosahagun for @3nglishOnline content writers

Company: COUPANG (Korea) www.coupang.com Color Your Life. The start/history of the company Coupang was founded in 2010 by Bomseok Kim, a graduate of Harvard Business School, is the world's fastest growing e-commerce company. Coupang e-commerce company is based out of South Korea. Coupang has achieved its growth by consistently innovating new services that benefit the customer experience, such as a compelling mobile shopping platform, same-day delivery and personalized recommendations Founder As said, Coupang was founded in 2010 by Bomseok Kim, he was born in Seoul, and left Korea at the early age of 7 with his father who worked abroad for Hyundai. At the age of 13 Kim went to a boarding school in Massachusetts, where he became fanatic of the New England Patriots and Red Sox Teams. He cultivated himself at university in and track and field and varsity wrestling. And was good enough students to have grades to allow him get into Harvard. Harvard graduate Bomseok Kim is an academic, or tried to be, but his business drive and his eagerness to get practical hands-on in the business world. After Harvard, Kim at first enrolled in the media business. His professional practices were at the New Republic and he then started a “the Current” student magazine. Newsweek bought his initiative a year after Kim graduated in 2000. In year 2006 Kim raised $4 million for “02138” a Vanity Fair inspired Harvard alumni magazine which didn´t make it through the 2008 world economic crisis. Then, Kim attempted Harvard Business School in 2010 but lasted only a year. Having studying at Seoul National University prior to his M.B.A. attempt. At that point he knew he “wanted to start something in commerce in Korea”. Groupon’s daily-deal model was the trend and the easiest way to get funded. Kim immediately back in Seoul dedicated to create a Groupon clone to raise money from American investors more easily. Kim registered Coupang in USA as a ltd. (limited liability corporation) and soon spent almost $1 million on ads. Coupang was Facebook’s top advertiser in South Korea. The distinction is that he is almost always occupied round the clock as the CEO of Coupang, South Korea’s fastest-growing e-commerce site of all time. Kim’s estimated 19% stake in Coupang is worth $950 million. He’ll be a billionaire soon, barring disaster or recession. Scoring that well is a rare feat in a country where wealth is concentrated in the hands of chaebol family conglomerates. Kim’s story is like others. He was uncertain of having a successful career in the U.S. History The company´s history is extremely brief, shorter than 6 years long. It started in 2010 offering daily deals on services, but soon started partnering with dealers, wholesalers and selling physical goods. Coupang now offers a large selection of merchandise including consumables, home goods and decor, books and toys, sporting goods, electronics, baby goods, fashion, beauty products, and even travel and cultural events tickets. Main milestones in Coupan´s bullish-development have been: • Coupang was founded in 2010 by Bomseok Kim, with the mission of offering good, products and services. • The company became cash flow positive already at the end of 2011. Also, in the same year Coupang released an app for Android and for iPhone. • The company achieved monthly net profit as of May 2012. For that time, Coupang had already 700 employees, with 25,000 signed up merchants selling goods and services on its marketplace and roughly 12 million subscribers. • Coupang achieved in the Business Insider's list "THE DIGITAL 100: The World's Most Valuable Private Tech Companies" in October 2012. • As of August 2013, mobile sales accounted for more than half of the company's sales and 70% of its web traffic. • By May 2014 a total of $160 million raised Coupang from U.S. Venture Capitalists Investors: Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Greenoaks Capital Management, Sequoia Heritage, Altos Ventures, Rose Park Advisors, Maverick Capital, Clay Christensen, LaunchTime, Bill Ackman, etc. • In June 2015, Coupang received an investment of $1 billion from Japan’s Softbank. This $5 Billion Startup Is Filling Amazon's Void In South Korea • In 2016, its fifth year of full operation, Coupang exceeded $1 billion USD in annual sales. Coupang Becomes Nation’s First E-commerce Firm to Break 1 Trillion Mark in Sales. According to Forbes interview of Bomseon Kim, his $5 billion e-commerce firm Coupang employs 3,600 drivers for its Rocket Delivery service, which tries to deliver products to their customers in 24 hours across South Korea. Kim’s estimated 20% ownership share in Coupang is estimated already in almost $1 billion as of 2015. Coupang has achieved its growth by consistently innovating new services that benefit the customer experience, such as a compelling mobile shopping platform, same-day delivery and personalized recommendations Investment rounds (investors and financials) Last May 2014 Coupang raised a total of $160 million from U.S. Venture Capitalists Investors: Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Greenoaks Capital Management, Sequoia Heritage, Altos Ventures, Rose Park Advisors, Maverick Capital, Clay Christensen, LaunchTime, Bill Ackman, etc. Early thaat year Coupang launched his gold-product the ultra-fast delivery service called "Rocket Delivery". Last June 2014 Coupang raised $1 billion at a $5 billion valuation in a round led by Japanese telecom firm SoftBank. SoftBank thinks it can do it again with Coupang. From it´s SoftBank money, the company commited $1.3 billion to enhance its logistics infrastructure, already consisting of 21 warehouses, a fleet of trucks and an army of excellent service Coupang-men. The six-year-old startup grossed about $300million in 2015, a figure that will likely quadruple for 2016. Coupang CEO Kim Beom-seok believes the company has enough funds from the attracted investments and now his investors have a firm belief in his Coupang. Years later Coupang had changed again. It had raised $400 million from investor similar to Sequoia Capital and BlackRock to double their inventory. This time with the intention of selling fast compsumption goods or high frequency products like bottle wated, rice, and diapers to customers as cheap and quick as possible. The investment, Kim says, will pay off when customers, accustomed to fast delivery speed, order more over time. “We can’t bend the customers to what we want,” says Kim, “but we can bend ourselves to what the customers want.” Competitors It’s the closest thing the South Korea has to Amazon.com and in several key ways it’s better. Coupang and its founder, Kim, are the big reason Jeff Bezos will continue to avoid the country and its 51 million potential costumers, to avoid repeating the China failure. Kim has alimented an competition mentality that leads to workers dedicate more than the usual, something they work for more than 80 hours a week in a relentless drive to provide better service and products than its competitors. Compared to Amazon which is trying to achieve fastest delivery by application of ideas as the use of outside contractors, the experimenting with Uber-like driver networks and even dreaming the idea of using flying drones to improve delivery times to hours. In truth, for Amazon same-day shipments are only available in only 27 metropolitan areas. Coupang manages to do so country-wide. Bom Kim argues Koreans were unfamiliar with startups. Kim saysifhis company is built correctly and keeps doing week it could quickly surpass Gmarket and Auction Co., both owned by eBay EBAY as the nation’s largest shopping site. This south east Asia market is a huge market opportunity, and it’s completely overlooked. Amazon isn’t even doing what we’re doing now. How Coupang works What makes Coupang ideal for South Korea, and some countries developing in Asia, is that it does better what Amazon has lingered to achieve. Basically, the On-demand commerce, same-day delivery, instant gratification are the key-features of their thriving business. Coupang is already making same-day delivery the industry standard! Coupang already has built a large fleet of customized trucks, algorithm-controlled warehouses and more than 3,600 quality service employees who deliver goods and serve customers. Another key element which Coupang is doing better service is that you can cancel an order that’s already on its way! or even change a package’s destination at the last minute. Services still unavailable in 99% of other competitors, as Amazon. Where Amazon has lingered, Kim has been decisive. Amazon isn´t elsewhere the giant it´s in America. It actually just operates in only 13 countries of over 180. It´s truly interesting how settled Coupang is in these countries of Asia that famous renowned IT entrepreneur Jeff Bezos from Amazon hasn´t turned his attention to South Korea. Instead, Amazon has focused on more populous nations like Japan, with success, China, without success against Alibaba and Alibabaexpress, and in India where Jeff is still working his business progress from his 2$ billion investmente. “When I was at Amazon we talked constantly about (going to compete into) Korea” says Henry Low now leads global operations for Coupang, and Amazon’s former vice president of operations in China “But we were having such a challenge trying to grow in China and the lack of resources, that the answer was alreays Not yet, not now.’” Why was South Korea a good place for Kim to start his Coupang business? Besides the fact of having lived and studied in Seoul, Think of it, if you could invent the ideal country for online trade and commerce, it would be very much similar to South Korea, full of wealthy citizens, ego-driven competitive people, always updated and wired online, and beside a very heavily dense population with over 50 million potential customers. In SouthKorea almost everyone has a both a high speed network and a smartphone. Also half the population lives in the greater Seoul making delivery logistics lots simpler logistics. Revenue Sales for Coupan have seven-fold up to 1.5 US$ billions. Coupangs marketplace business might be overrun by its retail division in the following years. According to Kim he wanted to point in the direction of the Amazon model, but he´s isn´t fixed to any business plan. According to Euromonito, sales information measurer, of every dollar spent online in USA a little more than 9 cents are spent online, whereas take South Korea, it´s up to 15 cents of every retail dollar spent was online. Every new hired by Couplan is given a copy of the Amazon book The Everything Store. Also the company is constantly compared to the Ancient Mongol Empire within closed doors company meetings. Kim seems to be a true fan of the Great Ghenghis Khan, in meetings he constantly reminds employees how Khan conquered lands East and into Europe, and points out that his most special power was adaptably of how his armies fought. In the Online world Kim, he is willing to do whatever it takes to win battles to win the customers´ hearts. Kim is a fan of the New England Patriot, and has in his office a Bill Belichick ball. He says he likes him since he´s a man of “few words” and that he “just wins”. References: www.coupang.com Coupang Faces off against Retail Giant Shinsegae | Korea IT Times. www.koreaittimes.com Coupang logs 3-fold jump in 2015 sales. english.yonhapnews.co.kr This $5 Billion Startup Is Filling Amazon's Void In South Korea - Forbes. www.forbes.com Coupang (company) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org Landmark Sales: Coupang Becomes Nation’s First E-commerce Firm to Break 1 Trillion Mark in Sales. www.businesskorea.co.kr http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/industry/14416-landmark-sales-coupang-becomes-nation%E2%80%99s-first-e-commerce-firm-break-1-trillion#sthash.qcQuSRf8.dpuf - www.businesskorea.co.kr