Rakuten, Inc, Japan’s biggest Internet service company, has closed an all cash transaction to acquire an 80% stake in Tradoria (www.tradoria.de), one of Germany’s leading online ecommerce platforms.
In January 2010 Seventure became the lead investor in Tradoria as part of Seventure’s strategy to back emerging high growth national and European champions in the ICT industry. Tradoria employs a unique business model that encompasses a web store, marketplace and checkout in a single product for small and medium-sized merchants. Since Seventure’s investment Tradoria has tripled its customer base to more than 4400 shops and has reached a leading position in several product categories such as furniture, house and garden and life style articles.
Dr Wolfgang Krause, the partner in charge of Seventure’s German ICT investments and board member at Tradoria says: “Since the beginning I was convinced about the strength of Tradoria’s business model and its team. After 18 months on board, I’m pleased that we were able to introduce Bamberg based Tradoria to Rakuten one of the global players in the Internet and to help in facilitating this transaction.”
Since 2008 when Seventure opened its Munich office with Conject, Retailo, Plinga and Tradoria Seventure has build up a diversified portfolio of high growth ICT companies in the German market.
“This transaction is validating our German investment strategy of backing high growth and well executed ICT companies”, says Valérie Gombart, General Partner at Seventure and Head of ICT Department. “After 3 years in the German market this transaction has already paid back a significant amount of our capital invested in this region, giving us an IRR of more than 140%."
