Japanese sneaker platform SODA Inc. recently announced it raised USD 56.4 million in a Series C funding round led by SoftBank Ventures Asia.
The round also saw participation from other investors such as JAFCO Group Co Ltd., Altos Ventures, and Korea-based sneaker reselling platform KREAM.
In addition to the new capital, SODA also announced the acquisition of competitor Monokabu. With this deal, the firm claims that it now leads the marketplace with an 80% share of the sneaker resale industry in the country.
It is to be noted that the company runs SNKRDUNK, one of the top sneaker reselling platforms in Japan, with over 2.5 million users per month. The firm clocked in sales of about USD 34.7 million in May 2021, which was a 10x increase over the previous year.
SNKRDUNK would collaborate with KREAM to share awareness about inventory management, sneaker authentication, logistics, and other operations-related topics to boost their share of the Asian sneaker resell market.
SODA would put in a part of its Series C capital to expand into other Asian markets, beginning with the Philippines and Indonesia next year since both economies have growing e-commerce industries and a significant number of Generation Zs, which is a beneficial factor for SNKRDUNK.
SoftBank Ventures Asia had also led SODA’s USD 22 million Series B round in January. SODA’s chief executive Yuta Uchiyama claimed at the time that they observed a high demand for sneakers despite the pandemic's economic impact and that growing acceptance of online shopping also helped propel sales.
A SoftBank Ventures Asia spokesperson mentioned the fund chose to reinvest in SODA looking at the company's tremendous growth since its prior investment. The post-money value of the Japanese platform at present is around 24 billion JPY (USD 218 million).
With the latest round, the sneaker company has amassed USD 81.4 million from investors to date.
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