Recently, there’s been increased interest in e-commerce platforms selling discounted items through a direct-from-manufacturer model. Wish and Hollar are two of the most prominent companies offering e-commerce platforms that sell lower-cost goods directly from manufacturers, often based in Asia.
This direct-from-manufacturer model is noteworthy because it completely cuts out middlemen, thus allowing products to be sold at a highly discounted price, without the markups typically found on products sold by retailers.
Using CB Insights data, we looked at the considerable investor interest in Wish and Hollar over the last few years.
While Wish has attracted a plethora of institutional and individual investors, it has also been backed by smart money investor Founders Fund, along with a host of notable angels, VCs, and corporations. While Hollar has a smaller number of investors by comparison, it has also attracted the attention of smart money investors, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Index Ventures.
Below you can see a Business Social Graph, highlighting investors in the two companies.
Notes: Each green line represents a single investment. Smart money investors are highlighted in yellow. Please click here to learn more smart money investors.
In addition, we can also take a look at the funding history for both startups. Both have received several rounds of funding, and most recently Wish raised a Series F round from DST Global and Third Point Ventures, among others. Using CB Insights’ enhanced valuation data, we can see while Hollar’s valuation has grown to $98.4M as of its last round of financing, Wish’s valuation has ballooned to $3B, making it officially a unicorn as of 2015.
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