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Three biggest Internet companies in each country

economist.com

71–80 of 87 posts

Re: Three biggest Internet companies in each country

#71
post #14

I am Dutch, so naturally I checked the top 3 for the Netherlands. Number 3 (Booking.com) and number 1 (Marktplaats.nl, the dutch craigslist), I can understand because they are indeed big and well-known sites. However, the number 2, apparently, is a website called "Shapeways", which is supposedly worth $175M. I have never heard of it and I asked some of my colleagues and they never heard of it either. After visiting s…

Hi, WSR team here. Great comment! The Netherlands have an interesting situation. Even though everyone would say the startup ecosystem is booming, the country has not managed to produce BIG success stories. We selected Shapeways as one of the top 3 companies there. They've raised almost $50M to date ( http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shapeways ) and we put our guesstimate in a range of $150M - $200M. The company…

I'd like to name these companies off the top of my head:

bol.com: originally started in Germany, but head office is in the Netherlands. They are the "dutch" Amazon, with 405 million euros in sales in 2012 [0], the same year it was also sold to Ahold for a reported 350 million.

coolblue: Dutch online electronics store, like newegg. They launched specialized webshops for just about every category of consumer electronics. They did 248 million euros in sales in 2013 [1]. All three founders made it into the top 10 of wealthiest self-made dutch entrepreneurs below the age of 40 [2].

Takeaway.com: takeaway websites, best know for the dutch and belgian websites "thuisbezorgd.nl" and "thuisbezorgd.be", which have a market share of 90% and 70% in their respective countries. They received a 74 million euro ($103 mln) round B this year [3].

[0] http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bol.com#Omzet_en_winst (dutch) [1] http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolblue (dutch) [2] http://safility.blogspot.nl/2013/08/overzicht-met-internetmi... (dutch) [3] http://corporate.takeaway.com/Over+ons/Nieuwsarchief/2

Re: Three biggest Internet companies in each country

#72
post #22
post #3

Britain's biggest three are ASOS (online clothing retailer), JustEat (online takeaway ordering) and Wonga (online short term loans at ludicrous interest rates). A sad state of affairs for a technologically advanced country. Finland's top three are all Free To Play gaming companies. That's interesting. Is there some sort of tax incentive for gaming companies there?

The British list would appear to have some omissions. E.g. online real-estate site Rightmove (LON:RMV - has market cap $3.76Bn) is bigger than JustEat and Wonga.

Also, where's the Wonga valuation of $2.5bn sourced from?

Re: Three biggest Internet companies in each country

#73
post #13

World Startup Report team here. It's awesome to see our data on HN! One interesting point to note is that out of the top 7 countries, none of them are from Europe. To put into context, the biggest internet company in Europe is merely 1/40th of the size of Google. HOWEVER, Europe dominates the unicorn club (companies over $1b in valuation). Nearly half of 30 countries on the unicorn club list are European. This prompt…

It seems important in a report such as this to distinguish between place of control vs. operation.

As a South African who wants to leave for better opportunities overseas, it was a bit odd to see South Africa as 3rd on the list given my personal experience. I've been presented with opportunities at both the 1st and 3rd largest South African companies on that list and rejected them for what appeared to be better opportunities elsewhere. Seeing them here had me second-guessing myself.

Looking closely, it's clear Naspers is the reason for South Africa's position. Yet only 54% of their revenue comes from Internet-based business -- nearly all of which represents foreign-based acquisitions [1].

What is the objective of the report? As you point out, Europe dominates the 'unicorn club', and being closer to whatever magic makes that possible seems more appealing to me as a person seeking business opportunities, but this conclusion is not obvious from the presentation of the data.

[1] http://www.naspers.com/pdf/financials/provisional-results/20...

Re: Three biggest Internet companies in each country

#74
post #13

World Startup Report team here. It's awesome to see our data on HN! One interesting point to note is that out of the top 7 countries, none of them are from Europe. To put into context, the biggest internet company in Europe is merely 1/40th of the size of Google. HOWEVER, Europe dominates the unicorn club (companies over $1b in valuation). Nearly half of 30 countries on the unicorn club list are European. This prompt…

Why not try a chart corrected for country GDP?

Re: Three biggest Internet companies in each country

#75
post #32

The graph is misleading. South Africa Naspers owns Allegro (1st Poland). Secondly, Allegro, which is polish Ebay, has almost whole market share in Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus etc. and possibly that contributes to Naspers value. There is no nk.pl (polish facebook, 50% market share). It was sold for 200m a few years ago. Hard to compare valuation of private and public companies, especially in different places. Bet…

Lukas, World Startup Report team here. We worked together with the Economist putting this together. We did look at private/public AND also acquired companies (in case of Allegro). Would you have a source for the acquisition information? Keep in mind that we looked at 3 companies per country in which case it could have only been coincidence. Our goal was to show the relative extent of what is possible in different cou…

first google hits http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/27/poalnds-facebook-nasza-klas...

Also onet.pl PLN 1.4 billion (€335 million).

http://www.digitaltveurope.net/23115/tvn-in-move-to-sell-one...

Re: Three biggest Internet companies in each country

#76
Only 4 countries from Africa are listed , South Africa , Kenya , Algeria and Ethiopia , I don't know how they acquired such data , but I can assume the data is not accurate about the companies listed from Algeria (companies I know). Also some big African market are not listed : Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria. Or is it that the internet companies of these countries are many small companies that compete and do not monopolizing the market?
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