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Mirakl, a Paris-based software company that develops ecommerce solutions for corporate and retail clients, isn’t shy about throwing its weight around in the $50.8 billion software-as-a-service (SaaS) enterprise app market. Case in point? It today announced that it’s secured $70 million in series C financing led by Bain Capital, with participation from existing investors 83North, Felix Capital, and Elaia Partners. That brings the startup’s total raised to $100 million.
That’s a lot of dough, to be sure — more than triple the size of its $20 million series A in July 2015 — but CEO Adrien Nussenbaum says Mirakl has the numbers to back it up. Revenue grew 200 percent from 2013 to 2014 and 80 percent from 2017 to 2018, and gross merchandise volume (GMV) — the total sales dollar value for merchandise sold through its online stores — was up 100 percent year-over-year last year, fueled by 60 new customer acquisitions and 37 new marketplaces. (Mirakl claims its clients have achieved $1 billion GMV to date.)
According to Nussenbaum, the fresh capital will be used to advance Mirakl’s technology and partner ecosystem, onboard a new cohort of sellers, and launch new analytics capabilities, as well as suss out opportunities for expansion into Asia-Pacific and Latin American regions.
“Mirakl is building a new category and ushering in a platform revolution,” he said. “We are paving the way to a new business model that can transform businesses and help them compete with giants like Amazon and Alibaba. We are thrilled that our investors recognize this vision and the huge opportunities in the marketplace space. This investment is a chance to bring our vision to the next level.”
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Above: Mirakl’s Marketplace cloud backend.
Mirakl — which was cofounded in 2011 by Nussenbaum and Philippe Corrot, who previously co-led online video game marketplace Splitgames — targets both B2C and B2B verticals with its API-based Marketplace platform. Much like Amazon Marketplace, it enables retailers and brands to offer products and services from third parties within their respective online stores, with support for all the features you’d expect from a modern ecommerce engine — order splitting, in-store returns, credit limits, segment targeting, and carrier selection.
From within Mirakl’s cloud dashboard, operators can see sellers and filter them by balances, ratings, order volume, and other metrics, and view historical and real-time stats on pending orders, current balance, revenue, and average order value. Marketplace handles a decent portion of the work automatically — retailers can tap prepackaged workflows for customer service and seller orders, create rules that mandate baseline customer service and seller performance, and automate tasks like onboarding, commissions, and payments. Moreover, all the while, managers get notifications that help to keep transparent all buyer-seller interactions.
In addition to Marketplace, Mirakl maintains a consultancy business that draws up business plans, conducts marketing studies, optimizes and streamlines workflow processes, and recruits sellers for clients. And through its Blink Partners program, it offers a curated list of 200 tech and service partners.
Currently, about 20,000 sellers and 200 customers in over 40 countries use Marketplace in some capacity, Mirakl says, including Siemens, Toyota Material Handling, Office Depot, Best Buy Canada, Walmart Mexico, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Urban Outfitters, Carrefour Taiwan, Fnac, Leroy Merlin Brazil, and Albertsons Companies. The company claims it can deliver up to 162 percent return on investment within three years and revenues upwards of $412 million, and says that customers experience an average 15 percent and 7 percent increases in order size and physical store sales, respectively, with Marketplace.
Mirakl’s growth coincides with the rise in popularity of online marketplaces. According to analysts at Digital Commerce 360, sites like Alibaba, Walmart, JD.com, and Amazon accounted for 52 percent of global ecommerce sales last year and sold more merchandise than all standalone retail websites combined. Gartner, meanwhile, forecasts that more than 50 percent of all online sellers will adopt marketplaces or include third-party sales in their ecommerce ecosystems by 2020, and that 15 percent of medium- to high-GMV digital commerce companies will have deployed their own online storefronts by 2023.
“Marketplaces are experiencing rapid growth, and Mirakl is at the forefront of pushing the space forward,” said Bain Capital partner Scott Friend. “Its sophisticated technology, impressive customer-base, and high levels of customer satisfaction put Mirakl in a prime position to drive the shift to marketplace models among B2C and B2B ecommerce businesses. We are excited to join them on this journey.”
In addition to its Paris headquarters, Mirakl has offices in London and Boston. It says headcount grew by over 200 percent over the past two years, and it plans to add another 100 employees this year.
