Coupang, a leading ecommerce company, said on Tuesday it would pour more resources into logistics in a bid to offer the highest level of delivery service in the rapidly growing market for online discounts in Korea.

“We will offer the best ecommerce model, even compared with Amazon,” said Coupang CEO, Kim Bom, during a press conference held at a Seoul hotel.

According to Kim, the key to the ambitious plan is a huge investment in logistics, especially into delivery personnel called “Coupang Man.”
 

Unlike other social commerce companies that are more of a mediator between business owners and customers, Coupang has extended its direct purchases from businesses. The products are also more promptly delivered to customers through its own delivery people, who are trained and monitored by the company’s exclusive team.

“Coupang Man is our valuable asset that would differentiate our services from rivals,” Kim said. “Hiring more than 5,000 people for logistics may seem risky for now, but the investment will create innovation in the longer term.”

The CEO declined to further elaborate on the expected profits from the new investment, but said the company’s vision was shared with its big investors and led to their huge investment.

In 2014, the company secured a total of $400 million in funding, including $300 million led by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm.

Coupang currently operates seven warehouses across the nation and some 5,500 employees, including 1,000 delivery people, are working for logistics alone. The company plans to set up two or three more warehouses by 2016, with the largest under construction on a 99,173 square-meter site at Incheon.

Along with its renewed commitment to logistics, the company has also hired a slew of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to its management team over the past years.

Chief technology officer Jim Dai, former CEO of U.S.-based big data company CalmSea, and Vivek Subramanian, head of product owners office who worked for Oracle, also joined the press event on Tuesday.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)