Yahoo to Buy into South Korean GMarket

PanAsianBiz ^ | June 9, 2006 | Dr. Bill Belew

[G. Stolyarov II]

Yahoo is planning to pony up $60 million to buy a 10% share in South Korea's No 2. online retailer GMarket.

South Korea has one of Asia's fastest growing e-commerce industries.

Yahoo will buy its steak, I mean, stake from the venture capital firm Oak Investment Partners.

It seems Oak Investment is the only significant outside institutional investor in GMarket...in other words, Yahoo had to go through them to get their foot in the door.

Yahoo's COO, Dan Rosenweigg, said, "GMarket's strength in e-commerce complements the strong offerings we already provide in the Korean market across communications, content, and search through Yahoo Korea and Overture Korea."

Yahoo.jp in Japan is one of the busiest sites on the Net. Yahoo has tied up with Alibaba and Taobao in China. Now it is has a stronghold in Korea as well.

Looks to me like Yahoo is making its way around Asia...Perhaps India is next, no?

What do you think?

[G. Stolyarov II]

Interesting; Yahoo! is diversifying its assets and revenue sources - from simply being a search engine to entering the online retail market and becoming a prominent player there. This is wise; if one of Yahoo's revenue sources someday happens to be doing poorly, Yahoo! will always be able to rely on the others. See Dr. Belew’s blog at PanAsianBiz