letgo, a rapidly growing free secondhand e-commerce platform, received a $500 million investment commitment from global media and entertainment tech giant Naspers. Naspers chose letgo based on the opportunity for ready market expansion and the startup’s extraordinarily successful growth to date, with over 100 million app downloads since its founding in 2015 and 400 million listings.
letgo is revolutionizing online buying and selling by combining technology like image recognition with intuitive design yielding an effortless ecommerce process. Users snap a picture of the product they want to sell and easily list it on the app based on letgo’s suggested title, price, and category of the product. Buyers and sellers can also communicate with each other, with over 6 billion messages sent between users, thus far.
“Our app makes it simple for tens of millions of buyers and sellers to connect in their own neighborhoods so they can put more money in their pockets, declutter their lives and put their space to better use,” explained letgo cofounder Alec Oxenford in a press statement.
letgo was named as one of the “Hottest Startups” by Wired and “best apps” by Google, evidenced by the 65 percent increase in monthly listers since the beginning of 2018 due to increased engagement and retention.
“We are fueling unprecedented growth in the secondhand economy through meaningful innovation,” stated Oxenford.
