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Mirakl raises $300 million for its marketplace platform

Published September 22, 2020

French startup Mirakl has raised a $300 million funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation — the company is now a unicorn. Mirakl helps you launch and manage a marketplace on your e-commerce website. Many customers also rely on Mirakl-powered marketplaces for B2B transactions.

Permira Advisers is leading the round, with existing investors 83North, Bain Capital Ventures, Elaia Partners and Felix Capital also participating.

“We’ve closed this round in 43 days,” co-founder and U.S. CEO Adrien Nussenbaum told me. But the due diligence process has been intense. “[Permira Advisers] made 250 calls to clients, leads, partners and former employees.”

Many e-commerce companies rely on third-party sellers to increase their offering. Instead of having one seller selling to many customers, marketplaces let you sell products from many sellers to many customers. Mirakl has built a solution to manage the marketplace of your e-commerce platform.

300 companies have been working with Mirakl for their marketplace, such as Best Buy Canada, Carrefour, Darty and Office Depot. More recently, Mirakl has been increasingly working with B2B clients as well.

These industry-specific marketplaces can be used for procurement or bulk selling of parts. In this category, clients include Airbus Helicopters, Toyota Material Handling and Accor’s Astore. 60% of Mirakl’s marketplace are still consumer-facing marketplaces, but the company is adding as many B2B and B2C marketplaces these days.

“We’ve developed a lot of features that enable platform business models that go further than simple marketplaces,” co-founder and CEO Philippe Corrot told me. “For instance, we’ve invested in services — it lets our clients develop service platforms.”

In France, Conforama can upsell customers with different services when they buy some furniture for instance. Mirakl has also launched its own catalog manager so that you can merge listings, add information, etc.

The company is using artificial intelligence to do the heavy-lifting on this front. There are other AI-enabled features, such as fraud detection.

Given that Mirakl is a marketplace expert, it’s not surprising that the company has also created a sort of marketplace of marketplaces with Mirakl Connect.

“Mirakl Connect is a platform that is going to be the single entry point for everybody in the marketplace ecosystem, from sellers to operators and partners,” Corrot said.

For sellers, it’s quite obvious. You can create a company profile and promote products on multiple marketplaces at once. But the company is also starting to work with payment service providers, fulfillment companies, feed aggregators and other partners. The company wants to become a one-stop shop on marketplaces with those partners.

Overall, Mirakl-powered marketplaces have generated $1.2 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) during the first half of 2020. It represents a 111% year-over-year increase, despite the economic crisis.

With today’s funding round, the company plans to expand across all areas — same features, same business model, but with more resources. It plans to hire 500 engineers and scale its sales and customer success teams.

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Mirakl raises $70 million to manage the marketplace of your e-commerce website

Published February 28, 2019

French startup Mirakl raised a $70 million funding round. Bain Capital is leading the round, with existing investors 83North, Felix Capital and Elaia Partners also participating.

If you’ve bought a few products from a third-party seller on an e-commerce website that isn’t Amazon or Alibaba, chances are you’ve used Mirakl in the past. The company has built a solution to manage the marketplace of your e-commerce platform.

While Mirakl doesn’t have a ton of customers, each customer is very valuable. The company has worked with some of the biggest names in e-commerce so that they could add a new revenue stream with a marketplace. Examples include Best Buy in Canada, Walmart in Mexico, Office Depot and Darty.

The startup also lets you create B2B marketplaces for bulk selling and other complicated transactions. Sellers can set minimum and maximum quantities and customize their listings.

In 2018, the startup managed to add 60 customers and launch 37 marketplaces — it doubled the gross merchandise volume compared to 2017. And it’s true that marketplaces are attractive. You can greatly increase your sales without any physical infrastructure investment as third-party sellers handle logistics.

Behind the scene, Mirakl has developed connectors that work with multiple e-commerce platforms. After setting up Mirakl, your third-party sellers will also get their own on-boarding back end. And Mirakl continuously helps you when it comes to maintaining a certain level of quality and handling orders.

More recently, Mirakl has developed a catalog manager so that you can more easily manage product listings. It lets you get product information, merge product listings and moderate your platform in general. Any e-commerce website can use it, not just websites that operate a Mirakl marketplace.

The company has also launched a services marketplace so you can upsell your customers with extended warranties and insurance products from third-party companies before they check out.

Mirakl works with global B2B platforms as well as retail websites that usually operate in a country or a handful of countries. Thirty percent of retail clients are French, 30 percent are American and 40 percent are from the rest of the world. The startup charges an upfront fee as well as a monthly subscription that varies according to the success of your marketplace.

With today’s funding round, the company plans to do more of the same, at a bigger scale. Mirakl will expand the team, expand to new countries and improve its product offering.

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