Letgo, an online marketplace for consumers to buy and sell used goods via its mobile app, today announced a $500 million investment solely from venture capital technology investor Naspers Ltd.
The online marketplace, which has grown the number of people listing products for sale has grown by 65% since the beginning of 2018, said the new financing will fuel, “growth, product evolution and expansion into new verticals and monetization efforts.” Letgo has surpassed 100 million app downloads, 400 million listings and 6 billion messages sent between users, letgo says.
“We are fueling unprecedented growth in the secondhand economy through meaningful innovation,” said letgo co-founder Alec Oxenford. “Our app makes it simple for tens of millions of buyers and sellers to connect in their own neighborhoods so they can put more money in their pockets, declutter their lives and put their space to better use.”
Consumers can shop letgo’s marketplace for electronics, cars, collectibles, clothing, furniture and more. The free app lets sellers post items for free and doesn’t take a percentage from their sales, unlike other marketplaces such as eBay Inc. and Etsy Inc.—No. 4 and No. 13 in the Internet Retailer 2018 Online Marketplaces. Currently, letgo is “exploring several monetization strategies, particularly around value-added services for users,” a letgo spokesman says.
Letgo in June launched its “Reveal” technology that allows sellers to take an image of an item they wish to sell, and letgo will tell the seller what it thinks the item is worth based on insights from letgo’s database of hundreds of millions of listings. After that, letgo also automatically suggests a title, price and category for the item. Additionally, letgo launched video listings so shoppers can view items at all angles.
“Reveal takes the guesswork out of selling secondhand, while video listings are a new way to show off whatever you want to sell when photos won’t do it justice,” Oxenford said.
Since its inception in 2015, letgo has raised about $1 billion, a letgo spokeman says, from Naspers, Accel, Insight Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, 14W, Eight Roads Ventures, Mangrove Capital Partners and FJ Labs
Letgo’s $500 million investor Naspers has invested in China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd., Flipkart (No. 9) and others. Additionally, Naspers invested 1.05 billion euros ($1.2 billion) in Germany’s Delivery Hero AG in 2017, once funded Polish online auction site Allegro before it sold the site for $3.25 billion in 2016 and had a 48% stake worth $240 million in Dubai-based online retailer Souq.com before selling it to Amazon.com Inc. (No. 1 in the Top 1000) in 2017, among other investments.