The company, which has raised over $375 million till date, said its new funding will be used to accelerate US and international growth, and to boost its already significant investment in areas such as artificial intelligence and image recognition.
“letgo has caught on faster than any of us could have anticipated, but our goal remains much bigger – to build the largest secondhand marketplace in the world,” said Co-founder Alec Oxenford.
“This new funding will bring us much closer to that vision. We are powering a fast-expanding secondhand economy that benefits not just buyers and sellers, but also the environment. letgo already helps tens of millions of users globally think used before they think new.”
Martin Scheepbouwer, CEO of Classifieds at Naspers, added, “letgo is the most significant threat that incumbent secondhand marketplaces have faced. Its early growth is unprecedented for this type of platform and it’s clearly tapped into an enormous consumer demand for a better way to buy and sell locally. In a short time, it has become a massive marketplace used by tens of millions of buyers and sellers. And its growth has only been accelerating.”
20M monthly active users
letgo also announced that it has reached 20 million monthly active users of its marketplace and 45 million downloads of its free app since launching in 2015; its active user base grew 359% in 2016 while total items posted daily by sellers increased by over 960%.
Founded in 2015 by Alec Oxenford and Jordi Castello, letgo claims that it will top $23 billion in annual user transactions (gross merchandise value of items sold) in the next six months.
It claims that its is the only app of its kind that uses artificial intelligence and image recognition to auto-title and categorize a seller’s listing.
