The Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc. has just purchased an 80% stake in Tradoria, one of Germany’s leading online e-commerce platforms (Update – January 2023: The startup seems to be no longer in business under this name and we therefore deactivated the link).
The virtual mall operator Rakuten announced this acquisition just today, without mentioning the price that was paid. Rumours within the German media landscape say that the 80% stake in Tradoria was bought for a sum in the double-digit million range. Rakuten will keep Tradoria’s management intact but will dispatch at least one director.
Tradoria was founded back in 2007 and is based in Bamberg. Today the young e-commerce platform handles 8 million products from 4,400 member stores. Before this acquisition, Tradoria was financially backed by Seventure Partners (about 24%), DuMont Venture (about 19%) and the European Founders Fund of the Samwer brothers (about 11%).
In 2010, Rakuten bought the French online shopping leader PriceMinister. With two European units under its belt, Rakuten will now start ‘cross-border’ e-commerce trade.
In relation to the acquisition of Tradoria Rakuten, founder Hiroshi Mikitani stated: “We look forward to working alongside Tradoria and Rakuten in building Europe’s strongest e-commerce platform, offering merchants and consumers a seamless and borderless online shopping experience.”
By the way: If you’d like to stay up-to-date regarding startup news and interesting opportunities, make sure to subscribe to our free weekly EU-Startups Newsletter.
