On April 18, Petsmart announced its acquisition of pet care e-commerce platform Chewy, for a reported price tag of $3.35B. The deal, if finalized, would propel Chewy to the most expensive e-commerce acquisition in recent history (since 2009), knocking out Jet.com, which Walmart acquired in 2016 for $3.3B.
Compared to Jet.com, which relied heavily on venture funding and raised $725M before its acquisition, Chewy had raised significantly less from backers including T. Rowe Price, BlackRock, Volition Capital, and several others.
Both deals highlight the efforts of traditional brick-and-mortar retail chains to build their digital channels, especially in areas that lend themselves to automated refill like CPG which was an early focus for Jet (Chewy offers a subscription option).
In third place we see Avito, a Russian online classifieds site. Naspers, a South Africa-based multinational media company, invested a $1.2B a corporate majority into Avito in 2015, valuing the company at up to $2.7B.
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