Letgo Raises $175 Million Series C Round to Disrupt Incumbent Secondhand Marketplaces

Letgo, a mobile marketplace to buy and sell locally, today announced $175 million in new funding.

The fresh capital hails from from Naspers, Accel, Insight Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, 14W and other investors. The New York startup has raised over $375 million to date.

Letgo also announced it has reached 20 million monthly active users of its marketplace and 45 million downloads of its app since launching in 2015. The company disclosed that its active user base grew 359% in 2016 while total items posted daily by sellers increased by over 960%.

Letgo said its new funding will be used to accelerate international growth and to boost investment in areas such as artificial intelligence and image recognition.

Letgo users can post an item for sale in seconds by taking a photo without typing a word or entering a price. It is the only app of its kind that uses artificial intelligence and image recognition to auto-title and categorize a seller’s listing.

“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 cofounder Alec Oxenford. “This new funding will bring us much closer to that vision.”

“Letgo is the most significant threat that incumbent secondhand marketplaces have faced,” said Martin Scheepbouwer, CEO of Classifieds at Naspers. “Letgo’s 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.”

https://borndigital.com/2016/10/04/facebook-marketplace-facing-legal-decency-issues-on-first-day