Bom Kim is the founder of Coupang, an e-commerce giant that is known as one of the fastest e-commerce websites in South Korea. In 2016, he was the youngest person to be on the list of South Korea’s 50 Richest.
Early years and education
Bom Kim was born in October 7, 1978 in Seoul, South Korea. When he was 7, he and his father who works for Hyundai left South Korea. When he was 13, he studied in Deerfield Academy, a boarding and day school located in Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Kim took his undergraduate degree in Harvard University. During his undergraduate, he started a student magazine “the Current”, this was later bought by Newsweek in 2000. This will not be the end of Kim’s interest on Media Business. This is not the only venture he made on media business. In 2006, he raised $4 million for a Harvard alumni magazine named “02138” which was inspired by Vanity Fair. It didn’t make it through the financial collapse in 2008 though.
Bom Kim took some classes in Seoul National University before enrolling to Harvard Business School in 2010 to get a master’s in business administration, although he would drop out a year after. During this time, he had already decided to return to Korea and start a commerce business.
Coupang
Bom Kim founded Coupang after dropping out of Harvard Business School in 2010. It was initially registered in the United States as a limited liability corporation. By the end of 2011, he already saw it’sits potentials and on the same year, a mobile app was released for the Seoul based company that is available for Android and iPhone users.
The monthly net profit was successfully reached by 2012. With the company’s promising future, it was included in The Digital 100: The World’s Most Valuable Private Tech Companies in the same year. During this time, the company already counted over 700 emloyees, 23,000 merchants and 12 million users. By 2012, The company’s sales rapidly grew, calculated to increase by more than half of the company’s sales, and this was on mobile sales alone.
Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Sequoia Heritage, LaunchTime, Greenoaks Capital Management, Rose Park Advisors, Altos Ventures, Maverick Capital, Rose Park Advisors, Clay Cristensen, Bill Ackman, and other venture capitalist investors provided funding of $160 million in 2014 and the company received another $1 billion from Softbank based in Japan. While the company grossed about $300 million in 2015 and valued at $1 billion.
Coupang was labeled as South Korea’s “Amazon”, as it’sits annual sales exceedsexceed $1 billion USD by 2016. When asked how it is better that Amazon, Bom Kim highlighted that it provides deliveries of products and orders a few hours after it was submitted or “rocket delivery”. The products being sold ranges from food to electronics.
Throughout the years, Coupang has continued to attract large investors. For 2017 however, Coupang has reported that the company suffered loss of almost 639 billion won. While there are debates about the company’s stability because of the losses reported for the past three years, the company’s revenue and losses both continues to increase. 510 billion won from Coupang, LLC (the company’s affiliate in the United States) was used providing a total of 813 billion won cash by the end of the year to make up with it’sthe loses.
Despite the loses, SoftBank continuously support and invest in Coupang. The company raised $2 billion during the last quarter of 2018 from SoftBank’s Group Corp.’s Visin Fund to accelerate its development on online shopping and delivery.
In 2019, the company continues its growth by signing a deal with Apple, a multinational technology company based in Cupertino, California known for it’sits products—Macbook, iPad, Apple Watch, and iPhone. With this deal, customers are able to get the Apple product they ordered in less than 24 hours.
Coupang’s CEO, Bom Kim also eyes to go public and register the company in Nasdaq by 2020.