B2B marketplace Ankorstore gets new funding and 'unicorn' status

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 10, 2022

Ankorstore, which says it’s Europe’s fastest growing B2B marketplace, has announced a Series C funding round that has brought in an extra €250 million investment.

The wholesale marketplace brings together 200,000 retailers and 15,000 brands across Europe and this latest development makes it Europe’s newest unicorn after launching only two years ago, with its valuation now around €1.75 billion. Unicorns are start-ups or privately-held firms with €1 billion+ valuations.

The new funding round was led by Bond and Tiger Global with the participation of Eurazeo and Coatue as well as all existing investors — Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, GFC, Alven and Aglae.

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The company was founded with a mission to “reinvent the wholesale market for independent brands and retailers in order to level the playing field for independents” and has grown quickly to become the category leader across Europe. 

Its sales volume rose 950% between 2020 and 2021. With more than 11,000 brands registered in 2021, today there are more than 15,000 brands selling more than one million unique products on the platform.

Co-CEO and co-founder Nicolas Cohen said the funding “will allow us to expand geographically and accelerate activities in our European core markets. Today, we operate in 23 countries and have offices in Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Stockholm. In 2022 we will open offices in Italy and Spain so we can be as close to our brands and retailers as possible”.

The business currently employs 400 people but is in the process of adding to that number with the other co-CEO and co-founder Nicolas D’Audiffret saying the firm is aiming “to strengthen our collaboration with brands and retailers and to develop our local sales and customer support to offer the best customer experience, so that retailers can order easily and with no risk”. 

It plans to to scale both horizontally and vertically by adding new product categories and features. It recently added two new categories (sports & wellbeing and pets) to its five core product categories that include fashion and beauty.