TMON (Ticket Monster)
- 🦄Became a unicorn2018
- 📈Peak valuation$1.3 Billion ’18
- 💔Became a Unitard2024
- 💸Last valuationWiped out
How it happened
TMON (Ticket Monster) was one of South Korea's pioneering e-commerce platforms, a deals-and-marketplace unicorn that passed through LivingSocial, Groupon and then KKR and Anchor Equity ownership before being acquired by Singapore's Qoo10. In July 2024 TMON and its sister platform WeMakePrice abruptly stopped paying merchants amid a liquidity crunch tied to Qoo10's aggressive acquisitions; the two owed vendors more than 800 billion won (~$613M), affecting some 60,000 sellers. Both filed for court rehabilitation, WeMakePrice was later ruled bankrupt, and TMON's value was wiped out — one of the biggest collapses in Korean e-commerce history.
Source: Korea Herald / Korea Times / The Register (Korean e-commerce unicorn, ~$782M KKR/Anchor deal 2015, ~$1.2-1.3B peak; acquired by Qoo10; July 2024 liquidity crisis, court rehabilitation, ~818.8B won/$613M unpaid to ~60,000 vendors)
