The Samwer Brothers’ Rocket Internet is often dismissed as a copycat factory, but with a valuation of $5.7 billion (due to a recent $582M investment from United Internet) and a possible IPO, the German incubator/holding/investment firm is doing something right. We posited they might be more valuable than Y Combinator earlier which stirred some great debate.
Earlier, we’d highlighted that Rocket Internet companies brought in over $1.1B in funding between July 2012 and July 2013 including from big-name investors including Summit Partners, JP Morgan, NEA and PPR. But according to CB Insights data, that figure has now more than doubled a little over a year later.
With huge $50M+ financings to companies including Foodpanda, HelloFresh and Linio just in the past few months, total disclosed funding to Rocket Internet-incubated companies now totals more than $2.24B since July 2012. The most well funded of the bunch are Lazada, Dafiti, Zalora, Lamoda, Linio and Zalando – all fashion or multi-product eCommerce companies in emerging markets. Rocket Internet’s copycat companies are often, in fact, able to raise more funding than the original company.
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