According to an announcement made yesterday from Kinnevik, which is a major backer of dynamo, a German startup, Rocket Internet has plans of proceeding with an IPO this year on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Rocket Internet is the same company which operates Jabong.com and Foodpanda in India.
No numbers were revealed during the announcement yesterday, but according to Reuters, a source has tipped them that the Rocket IPO was worth some 750 million euros (US $970 million).
Rocket Internet operates in more than 50 countries and has more than 75 ventures in their portfolio such as the e-commerce retail companies Zalando in Germany, Jabong.com in India, Lamoda.ru in Russia, ZALORA in South East Asia, The Iconic and Zanui in Australia, the global food delivery platform foodpanda/hellofood, the global property listings site Lamudi as well as Lamudi.pk, Carmudi, Kaymu.pk, easytaxi.com.pk, Jumia in Africa, Azmalo.pk and Daraz.pk in Pakistan.
In India, Rocket Internet funded FabFurnish.com and Jabong.com in 2011, which is an e-commerce portal operating out of their Gurgaon office. The portal covers fashion, home decoration, sportswear and special design products
The company is slowly building up the world's biggest ecommerce and Web Services Company that too outside of China and America. Here the focus is especially on South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, parts of the African continent and Russia. These areas are often categorized under the underserved areas. The sites are often considered as clones of the websites that first developed in other countries, for example the Airbnb- like Wimdu.
The IPO will provide the company with more money which can then be used by it to expand its functioning and operations all around the world. The decision will also have some major ramifications in the continent of Asia. The ramifications would be more prevalently seen in Southeast Asia, as in Southeast Asia many startups fuelled by Rocket Internet are their respective market leaders. For example, EasyTaxi is considered the leading app in most of the countries and areas where it functions.
Rocket Internet isn’t scared of taking risks and has entered risky markets in the region, like that of Pakistan and Myanmar, where it knows it won’t be able to churn profits for many years to come.
The announcement made by Kinnevik also stated that the major shareholders in the company, which also includes the co-founders Samwer brothers, will now not be able to dispose their shares for at least 12 months from the day after public listing.
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