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UK-based e-commerce business OnBuy is set to launch globally this summer after securing a £5 million investment.
OnBuy’s founder and CEO Cas Paton is projecting the business to be turning over £2 billion in sales by 2024.
Following a 1,100% sales increase in the past year, and now closing this Series A funding round, OnBuy has an international expansion plan into 140 new territories – including the US, Germany, France, Spain and the UAE. To accommodate this growth, OnBuy has tripled its workforce to over 50 full-time staff.
Paton said: “The injection of this additional funding not only allows us to substantially grow the operational side of the business, but it gives the OnBuy team backing from phenomenal investors who can bring an array of eCommerce experience and expertise to the table, bolstering an already strong globalisation strategy.
“2020 is a coming-of-age era for OnBuy, where we’ve seen some of the world’s largest brands and retailers come on board. By having products from the leading household names available, including Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Kimberly-Clark, we are driving better competition which feeds into better pricing for consumers across a huge variety of products.
“We are well on track to claim 3-5% of the £84 billion UK e-commerce market in the next three years, and we’re aiming for 1% of the $3.46 trillion global e-commerce market, equating to $35 billion, in the next five years.
“We’re gearing up for an enormous expansion into over 140 new countries, which will allow OnBuy to become the first global marketplace and further set ourselves apart from the competition.”
The Series A funding was raised from leading London-based VC firm Fuel Ventures and other experienced investors including Nathalie Gaveau, the co-founder of Priceminister, a premium French marketplace later acquired by Rakuten.
Mark Pearson, the entrepreneur behind MyVoucherCodes prior to launching Fuel Ventures, added: “In recent years the VC world has largely turned its back on marketplaces. They are notoriously hard to build and even harder to grow, given that the market is dominated by some of the largest companies in the world. However, it’s clear from seeing OnBuy’s unique model, their achievements to date and the impressive year-on-year growth that they have found the right formula for long-term success.
“The decision to invest in OnBuy was an easy one for Fuel Ventures: it is now on the verge of becoming a serious global player, with some of the largest retailers and brands in the industry flooding to join the world’s fastest-growing marketplace.”
Read the July edition of BikeBiz below:
