Harvard dropout who went on to found ‘South Korea’s Amazon’ becomes overnight multi-billionaire

Kim, who left Harvard Business School in six months, is South Korea’s newest and second-youngest billionaire

Coupang Founder and CEO Bom Kim poses in front of the New York Stock Exchange facade ahead of his company’s IPO (AP)

South Korea’s e-commerce giant Coupang made its market debut on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange with the second biggest listing ever for an Asian company after Alibaba, establishing it’s founder as the country’s newest and second-youngest billionaire.

Coupang, a company founded by Bom Kim in 2010, who dropped out of Harvard and returned to South Korea to start his e-commerce business, saw its shares rising at 41 per cent on the very first day of a debut.

The company’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) is the biggest in the US this year after Uber Technologies raised $8.1 bn (£5.8bn) in 2019.

The retailer sold 130 million stocks which opened at a price range of $32-$34 (£22-£24) a piece, however, its price went up to $63.50 (£45.43) per share when the trading began, and closed at $49.25 (£35.31), giving the company a market cap of $84.47 bn  (£6.1bn). 

Coupang, often called the Amazon of South Korea, took the country’s market by storm by offering “next-day”, “same-day” and even “dawn” delivery of groceries and millions of other items at no extra charge, soaring in popularity and making it a household name. 

The company, although is still loss-making, saw its revenue double up in 2020 as the pandemic provided a boost to online shopping. According to its public filing, the company reported a revenue of $12bn (£8.6bn) in the last year.

Mr Kim, the founder and chief executive of the e-commerce giant, is South Korea’s newest billionaire. He was born and brought up in Seoul before he moved to the US in his early teens. His stint at Harvard Business School’s MBA programme was short-lived, as he decided to move back to his birth country in 2010 and become an entrepreneur, impressed with the business model of Groupon.

Coupang found a big investor in SoftBank, a Japanese multinational company, whose vision fund has a 35 per cent share in it. The company also has  Sequoia Capital and BlackRock among its other investors.

It has reportedly sold some of the shares to investors who were existing backers of the company, a report by Bloomberg said quoting people in the knowledge of the matter.

“We were fortunate to have demand from a lot of great investors and we didn’t have room for all of the great investors out there,” Mr Kim was quoted by Bloomberg as saying.

“I think we’re going to be going forward now with a wonderful group of investors, new investors as well, who share that long term vision and strategy,” he said.

Before Coupang, Chinese giant Alibaba made a historic listing on NYSE, as the biggest IPO of an Asian company ever, as it raised $25 billion in 2014.

The South Korean e-commerce market, currently the seventh largest in the world, is also one of the fastest growing. It is expected to grow at a much larger pace with the boom triggered by the pandemic. With a vast home delivery network already, the country has one of the fastest wireless internet speed and a population of 50 million.

According to GlobalData’s e-commerce analytics, the company’s 2020 market grew at 22 per cent. Its volume, valued at $128 billion last year, is expected to reach $206 billion by 2024, according to Euromonitor International, a market research company.