One of the World's Most Innovative Companies for 2020
Coupang has been selected as the second most innovative company in the Asia-Pacific region by Fast Company, which announced the World's Most Innovative Companies for 2020 on March 10. Fast Company previously picked out Coupang CEO Bom Kim as one of the “20 Most Creative People in Business in 2019” in May 2019.
The honor of Asia Pacific's most innovative company went to Singapore's fashion e-commerce company Zilingo. Samsung Electronics placed third.
Fast Company said Coupang, which is nicknamed "Amazon of Korea," is doing what even Amazon cannot do. Fast Company took note of Coupang’s dawn delivery service, which allows orders to be placed as late as midnight and guarantees delivery of the goods by 7 a.m. the next day. Coupang delivers these goods without using thick shipping boxes.
More than a million kinds of products including fresh foods, ice creams and the iPad are delivered to customers in just a few hours, 365 days a year.
To this end, Coupang built logistics infrastructure as big as 193 football fields put together across the country, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to predict customers' orders in advance and make fast and accurate deliveries. The e-commerce company also manages all stages of deliveries, creating an environmentally-friendly experience.
Coupang reduced packaging by more than 60 percent compared to 2018, while lowering the damage rate of goods. In addition to pruning the amount of waste customers have to throw away, hundreds of millions of goods are shipped without boxes each year, and truck delivery distances were nearly halved.
"We will not stop bringing innovation to our business and services to make our customers say, ‘How can I live without Coupang?'” CEO Bom Kim said.