In turn, Back Market, specialist in the sale of smartphones
refurbished, becomes the best-valued unicorn in France, thanks to an XXL lift.
May those who find themselves there raise their fingers! Only a few hours after the 484 million euros raised by the fintech Qonto on Tuesday, virtually offering it the status of representative of the French Tech with the highest valuation (4.4 billion euros), Back Market has decided to follow suit. not. The company announced a fundraising of 450 million euros, making the platform the most valued French unicorn.
Back Market, a valuation of more than 5 billion euros
Back Market did not even give Qonto twenty-four hours. The refurbished marketplace (which offers smartphones, tablets, cameras, printers and others) has become the French unicorn that weighs the most, with a business valuation now estimated at 5.1 billion euros.
Its latest fundraising is also the fourth largest for a French Tech start-up since 2015, behind Sorare (580 million euros), Mirakl (476 million euros) and Qonto.
Behind this round table, we find the British investment fund Sprints Capital, which is already present in the capital of Vinted and Revolut. In the past, he has notably supported companies such as Groupon, Zalando or HelloFresh.
Carried by its unicorns, French Tech is on fire at the start of 2022
This new financial windfall will help Back Market to maintain and even strengthen its growth, in a booming refurbished market that is expected to become very important in the coming years.
The Back Market unicorn, founded in 2014 by Thibaud Hug de Larauze, Quentin Le Brouster and Vianney Vaute, is present in 16 countries and operates as a marketplace. This means that it connects its consumer customers with reconditioning professionals. This detail also allows the platform to escape the extension of the private copying levy to reconditioned products if it goes through foreign reconditioners, which obviously does not suit French companies specializing in the reconditioning sector.
Still, French Tech is having a crazy start to the year, let’s not be afraid to say it, with a rain of fundraising. PayFit, which raised 254 million euros, and Ankorstore, with 250 million euros, became unicorns, just before Qonto’s record raising (for a fintech) and, therefore, this new raising of almost half a billion euros of Back Market.
Source: wall street journal
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