Simone Investment Managers, the fund management subsidiary of handbag producer Simone, has invested $44m in South Korea-based mobile commerce platform Tmon as part of a $115m round, E27 reported yesterday.
The round, closed at a $1.2bn valuation according to TechCrunch, was filled by unnamed sovereign wealth funds and existing backers including investment firm KKR.
Founded in 2010 and also known as Ticket Monster, Tmon runs a daily deal-focused e-commerce platform that features a wide range of consumer goods from a total of more than 15,000 merchants, with roughly 80% of its transactions taking place on mobile devices.
Daily deals service Living Social acquired the company for $350m in 2011 before rival Groupon paid $260m for it in 2013, subsequently spinning it out in April 2015 with funding from KKR and private equity firm Anchor Equity Partners.
Mobile game publisher NHN Entertainment subsequently supplied $40m for Tmon in April 2016 as part of a round purportedly meant to be expanded to as much as $300m, though that extra cash does not seem to have come.
The NHN investment was made at a $1.5bn valuation, according to TechCrunch, though that valuation was itself double that at which the company spun out of Groupon the year before.