Will Coupang be the next successful baby Amazon?

WANDER AROUND Seoul’s residential neighbourhoods at dawn and you will invariably encounter a Coupang delivery van. In the past few years South Korea’s mini-Amazon has parked itself in a choice spot amid a crowded e-commerce market by steadily expanding the range of products it offers to deliver in time for breakfast, so long as customers order before midnight. Some items arrive the same day. The strategy looked sensible before the covid-19 pandemic. After 2020 it looks inspired. Coupang’s revenue nearly doubled from $6.3bn in 2019 to $12bn last year. It employs 50,000 people, twice as many as a year ago, and controls a quarter of South Korean e-commerce, up from 18% in 2019, according to Digieco, a research firm.