Twenga
Encyclopedia
Twenga.com is an online open shopping platform. In 2006, Bastien Duclaux and Cédric Anès created Twenga, meaning "straight to the goal" in an African dialect, as a unique website which would bring together "all online products and stores in one place."
Twenga's 15 websites in ten different languages display nearly 400 million products for 180,000 online shops, attracting web traffic of 40 million users monthly. The company states it is the "open shopping platform with the largest selection online."
. Frustrated by the difficulty in finding good deals online, Duclaux was inspired to create Twenga. Explaining the mechanics of Twenga, Duclaux said, "We created a shopping search engine that provides access to offers of all the merchants on the Web, unlike the price comparison of first generation, which displayed only those of their trading partners. To do this, we have developed technologies for automatic indexing."
By 2010, Twenga employed 120 people, including 50 research engineers. The company's "crawl" software enables Twenga to scan tens of millions of pages of the Internet everyday, automatically categorizing hundreds of million of products in ten languages including Russian, Japanese and Chinese. This proprietary technology allowed Twenga to raise nearly €7 million from venture capital
firms 3i
, Sofinnova
and others.
In 2009, the company achieved profitability with sales of €6.792 million. By 2014, Twenga is targeting sales of approximately €100 million.
The websites do not sell directly; instead they redirect users to online shops where they purchase products. Twenga itself generates revenues primarily by "advertising and business partnerships which give interested companies and retailers greater visibility than that provided by organic listing."
100 Global Award, the France Young Technology Leader Award and the Ernst & Young
Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the "Company of the Future" category for France.
Twenga's 15 websites in ten different languages display nearly 400 million products for 180,000 online shops, attracting web traffic of 40 million users monthly. The company states it is the "open shopping platform with the largest selection online."
Business model
Twenga co-founders Bastien Duclaux and Cédric Anès met in 2000 at the École Nationale Supérieure des TélécommunicationsÉcole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications
Télécom ParisTech is one of the most prestigious and selective grandes écoles in France and one of the finest institutions in the field of Telecommunications...
. Frustrated by the difficulty in finding good deals online, Duclaux was inspired to create Twenga. Explaining the mechanics of Twenga, Duclaux said, "We created a shopping search engine that provides access to offers of all the merchants on the Web, unlike the price comparison of first generation, which displayed only those of their trading partners. To do this, we have developed technologies for automatic indexing."
By 2010, Twenga employed 120 people, including 50 research engineers. The company's "crawl" software enables Twenga to scan tens of millions of pages of the Internet everyday, automatically categorizing hundreds of million of products in ten languages including Russian, Japanese and Chinese. This proprietary technology allowed Twenga to raise nearly €7 million from venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
firms 3i
3i
3i Group plc is a multinational private equity and venture capital company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It has offices in 13 countries across Asia, Europe and the Americas and had total assets under management of £12.7 billion as at 31 March 2011...
, Sofinnova
Sofinnova
Sofinnova is the name shared by two formerly-related venture capital firms, Sofinnova Ventures and Sofinnova Partners. Both firms trace their roots back to Sofinnova SA, an investment institution founded in Paris in 1972. The two firms have raised nearly $3B combined since inception, and share...
and others.
In 2009, the company achieved profitability with sales of €6.792 million. By 2014, Twenga is targeting sales of approximately €100 million.
Websites
Twenga runs 15 websites, including for markets in United States, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, Russia, Australia, China and Japan. The sites display 380 million products from than 180,000 online shops and Twenga reports it received 45 million visits to its sites in November 2010 alone.The websites do not sell directly; instead they redirect users to online shops where they purchase products. Twenga itself generates revenues primarily by "advertising and business partnerships which give interested companies and retailers greater visibility than that provided by organic listing."
Awards
In 2010, Twenga won the Red HerringRed Herring (magazine)
Red Herring was a technology business magazine, which flourished during the dot com boom, with global distribution and bureaus in Bangalore, Beijing, and Paris. It also sponsored conferences designed to bring venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and technologists together. But the magazine went into...
100 Global Award, the France Young Technology Leader Award and the Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....
Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the "Company of the Future" category for France.
External links
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