The e-commerce aggregator start-up, New Vessel has announced it has raised a confidential seed round that was co-led by Naver, an internet giant of South Korea along with other existing investors like Wooshin Venture investment, CKD Venture Capital. The other participants for the round were S&C Network and Lighthouse Combined Investment to take the market in Japan and South Korea. In the year 2021, the estimate of e-commerce markets of Japan and South Korea was $144 billion and $121 billion. Despite both the countries having comparatively larger e-commerce markets, the number of e-commerce aggregators is fewer than several other countries that have smaller sizes of markets, the company said.
The CEO of New Vessels, Jaebin Lee has explained that the new seed funding will be used by the company to gain Japanese and Korean e-commerce brands and hiring of supplementary experts for management and marketing of the brand, and also supply chain management. According to Lee, New Vessels is currently looking for brands that bring about annual revenue of $1 million with margins of 15-30%. The CEO also mentioned that the acquisition deal would take place between $1-2 million. The company is currently planning to raise its Series A funding after completing its acquisitions by June. Â
New Vessel has announced it has raised a confidential seed round that was co-led by Naver.
The e-commerce aggregator company was founded in September 2021 by Jaebin Lee and Kyuyong Lee. Jaebin has experience of over 10 years in M&A space as an investor and a lawyer, whereas Kyuyong Lee has worked at Korean e-commerce Coupang and Japanese e-commerce Rakuten in the past. Both the co-founders of the company have seen global aggregator giants grow with great speed for the past few years, including Perch and Thrasio. They noticed that despite South Korea and Japan top the list of e-commerce markets, the e-commerce aggregator industry of both countries is just launching. This notifies that these regions hold great potential for local aggregators in this space.
The start-up company has also said that it has plans to team up with sellers in Korea and Japan to lead the e-commerce industry, in order to take their growth into a productive direction by providing optimization strategies and tactics for the purpose of sales expansion. According to Lee, New Vessel is a company that visions to help sellers based out of the U.S. to expand their business in Japan and Korea, also allowing the Japanese and Korean brands to launch into the market of the U.S. Recently, New Vessels has teamed up with Spigen, as a strategic partnership to elevate the operational strength of the company. Spigen is a Korean and U.S.-based manufacturer of mobile phone accessories.
CEO of New Vessels, Jaebin Lee has experience of over 10 years in the M&A space as an investor and a lawyer.
Notably, a large number of online brand sellers present in Korea are not much aware of the possibility of the sale of their brands. the company believes in the potential that their partnership with the brand owners will help to add value to the sellers as well as the consumers altogether, and this will be done by bringing great products at prices that are affordable and also leave margin for the sellers, by filling the marketplace. Â
