In 2008, Milda Mitkute was moving house in Lithuania and wanted to give away some clothes. So Justas Janauskas built a website to distribute clothes to friends, and Vinted was founded. Four years later a mobile app was launched which allows users to buy, sell or swap clothing and communicate on forums. The company quickly expanded into Germany and is now available in 20 countries, with plans to reach Finland later in 2023. It now has more than 1200 employees headed by CEO Thomas Plantenga. Or...| Business of Apps
Ecommerce marketplace app Shopee started life out as a customer-to-customer marketplace, in the same vein as eBay, but over the past few years has remodelled itself as a b2c marketplace. That switch to a b2c hybrid model has netted Shopee a lot of customers, especially in the Southeast Asia region where it is the most popular ecommerce platform by some margin. It also offers services in East Asia and Latin America. Shopee has managed to surpass Amazon and other ecommerce marketplaces in this ...| Business of Apps
In 2015, IIT Delhi graduates Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal launched a fashion app startup called Fashnear, featuring on-demand delivery from local shops. Take-up was slow, and the founders resorted to picketing potential buyers outside of shops. The startup failed, but the following year Aatrey and Barnwal revived the platform and renamed it Meesho. Meesho has an emphasis on social media use, particularly Facebook and WhatsApp. The company realised that small retailers were already using t...| Business of Apps
eBay is an e-commerce platform, at first only providing customer-to-customer auction services, expanding into business-to-consumer shortly afterwards. In the 2000’s, eBay went on a spending spree that saw it taking ownership of PayPal, Skype and Stubhub, although it has since relinquished ownership of all three businesses. It is one of the few success stories of the dot-com bubble, which eBay fought through after going public in September 1998. By 2001, it was considered the world’s larg...| Business of Apps
Etsy is an e-commerce platform focused on small businesses and artisans which sell handmade or vintage items. It started life in Brooklyn, New York and quickly expanded throughout the US and into Europe. In a competitive US e-commerce market with Amazon and eBay, Etsy separated itself with the uniqueness of items sold and the focus on quality. Etsy’s editorial team in the early days also focused on highlighting artistic work, rather than commercially-made items. That has led to Etsy’s boo...| Business of Apps