Romanian largest online retailer eMAG becomes the second Romanian unicorn (after UiPath) valued at $1 billion by its parent organization Naspers who became the majority shareholder of eMAG in 2011, Busines Review announced. Reportedly, this big announcement was confirmed by both eMAG’s CEO, Iulian Stanciu and Ziarul Financiar representatives of the Naspers group.
“Since I came to eMAG I’ve been telling people that I wanted it to be a billion-dollar business. They said, you’re crazy!”
“I knew from the beginning that eMAG could grow into something big”, Stanciu said.
“Since I came to eMAG I’ve been telling people that I wanted it to be a billion-dollar business. They said, you’re crazy! We have too many problems! We were losing clients, services were not great, but a few things were very good: Radu Apostolescu, who created the brand, was a visionary, as he built it to be the customer-oriented. Bogdan Vlad, another founder, the one who built the back-end technology, also had a visionary approach. To their visions I added my knowledge of finance and leadership. The major growth is mainly due to the funding that eMAG has received. We got $200 million in funding. You can do a lot of things with this kind of money,” he added.
This big achievement was also confirmed by Naspers Group.
“We confirm that according to analysts who follow Naspers’ evolution, eMAG is a $ 1 billion business. Naspers Group is pleased with the progress made by Iulian and the eMAG team in the construction of an ecommerce group top in the region,” the Group announced, Romanin financial newspaper Ziarul Financiar reported.
Founded in 2001 in Buchares, eMAG is online retailer, a pioneer of this kind at the Romanian online market. For 17 years, the company has been constantly investing in technology-based services developed in Romania that help customers save time and money, aiming to become the largest online retailer in “New Europe”.
To date, the company has over 4000 talented people working in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. According to its CEO, Stanciu, by the end of 2018, eMAG expect a 20% increase in the turnover in Romania only. In line with that, just in the first 9 hours of the Black Friday, eMAG reported a record sales with more than $86,5M and over 930.000 products ordered. Moreover, 35.000 customers have used the online platform for the very first time.
Founded in 1915 in Cape Town, South Africa, Naspers on the other hand, is a global internet and entertainment group and one of the largest technology investors in the world. Operating in more than 120 countries and markets with long-term growth potential, Naspers builds leading companies that empower people and enrich communities. It runs some of the world’s leading platforms in internet, video entertainment, and media.
Avito, Brainly, Codecademy, Delivery Hero, eMAG, Flipkart, ibibo, iFood, letgo, Media24, Movile, MultiChoice, OLX, PayU, Showmax, SimilarWeb, Swiggy, Twiggle, and Udemy are just few of the companies that Naspers has invested in, acquired or supported.
* A unicorn startup or unicorn company is a private company with a valuation over $1 billion. As of August 2018, there are more than 260 unicorns around the world. Variants include a decacorn, valued at over $10 billion, and a hectocorn, valued at over $100 billion.