Willis Wee · · 2 min readMercari raises $14 million, plans to open U.S office next month
Tokyo-based mobile C2C shopping app, Mercari 1, has raised $14 million from Global Brain, Globis Capital Partners, Itochu Technology Ventures, GMO Venture Partners, and other undisclosed investors.
Ryo Ishizuka, co-founder at Mercari says the money will allow the startup to do additional hiring and marketing to increase its market share in Japan. It also plans to open an office in the U.S next month. Mercari has over 1.5 million downloads.
In our last interview with co-founder Shintaro Yamanda, he told Tech in Asia that he isn’t looking to sell Mercari. Rather, he wants to make “Mercari global and be a listed company someday.”
(See: This founder ditched Zynga and the gaming business for online shopping)
Ryo says:
We are aiming to be the number one C2C [marketplace] app both in Japan and U.S. [There are] lots of exciting things to come. We are going after the US market because 1) It is the biggest market, and 2) We want Mercari to be a global app/company, and to be truly global you have to win the US market. We could’ve gone after Asia, which probably gives us higher chance of succeeding than going after the U.S.
Prior to this financing round, Mercari previously raised $500,000 from East Ventures and as well as $3 million from United.
- Disclosure: East Ventures invests in Mercari and Tech in Asia. Please see our ethics page for more information.↩
Editing by Paul Bischoff
(And yes, we’re serious about ethics and transparency. More information here.)
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