Wayfair Names New Board Member

July 29, 2014  by in Executive Changes, Industry   

Romero Rodrigues, global CEO of Naspers, is an entrepreneur with expertise in e-commerce and consumer expertise. Naspers is a South African multi-national mass media company. Rodrigues is also a co-founder of the Buscapé Co., a digital commerce group.

Early in his career, Rodrigues identified an opportunity to introduce comparison shopping search engines to consumers shopping online in Latin America. The need for such a platform led Rodrigues to co-found the Buscapé Co., which started as one individual comparison shopping site and has since grown to more than 20 individual sites providing an affiliate network, shopping information, comparison shopping, fraud analysis and related tools.

At Buscapé, Rodrigues led more than 15 acquisitions and raised four funding rounds from investors including Great Hill Partners, Merrill Lynch and Itau Unibanco. In 2009, Naspers acquired 91 percent of Buscapé for $374 million.

"Romero is an exceptionally talented businessman and a great visionary in the e-commerce world," said Niraj Shah, CEO, co-chairman and co-founder of Wayfair. "We are honored to have him join our board and welcome his guidance as we continue to build Wayfair globally as a leading online destination for home goods."

In his current role at Naspers, Rodrigues oversees comparison shopping platforms in emerging markets including Brazil, Poland, Italy and South Africa. Under his leadership, Buscapé has become the dominant player in the comparison shopping category.

"E-commerce is an exciting, fast-growing market sector in the world's economy and Wayfair is poised to be a major player in that growth," Rodrigues said. "I am delighted to join Wayfair's board of directors and look forward to contributing to the company's continued success."

Rodrigues is a member of the Endeavor Brazil board, a global nonprofit that transforms emerging countries by supporting high-impact entrepreneurs.