Japan-based sneaker shoe marketplace Soda has raised ¥2.5bn ($24m) across series A and B rounds led by SoftBank Ventures Asia, a corporate venturing vehicle for telecommunications and internet group SoftBank.
The rounds also featured Colopl Next, a subsidiary of mobile game developer Colopl, as well as design studio operator The Guild, venture capital firm BasePartners and two private investors including Yoshio Aihara.
The company closed its $2.9m series A round in 2020 while the $21.1m series B round took place this month, according to TechCrunch.
Founded in 2018, Soda runs an online athletic shoe resale platform called SnkrDunk with more than 2.5 million monthly users. It also operates an online community where some tens of thousands of sports footwear items are showcased each month.
The company will use the funding to expand globally and will seek out synergistic opportunities with SoftBank Ventures Asia’s other portfolio companies, especially artificial intelligence technology developers covering areas such as logistics, customer support and product authenticity verification.
