Rocket Internet Case Study
ROCKET INTERNET
HOW CAN ROCKET INTERNET TRANSFROM ITS “FIRST FOLLOWER ADVANTAGE” INTO A LASTING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN EMERGING INTERNET COUNTRIES?
Author: Florent Labiale
E-commerce class - Fall 2014 / Ming-Hui Huang
Department of Information Management, National Taiwan University
Part I: Rocket Internet, the« start-up factory »
Rocket Internet was started in 2007 by the famous Samwer brothers who built high-growth companies which were acquired by eBay, Groupon (Citydeals) and News Corporation. Today, after less than 7 years of existence, Rocket Internet employs more than 20,000 people across their network of companies, which operates in more than 100 countries on five continents. Last September, Rocket Internet’s …show more content…
As stated by Oliver Samwer: “The first wave of this innovation is in the business model – online marketplaces, digital publishing, e-commerce, peer to peer lending etc. These are completely new ways of doing business, created by true visionaries. As these industries mature, like any industry, innovation doesn’t stop, it just moves down the chain into execution, operations and delivery. How do you do it better, faster, deliver better service for the customers, provide more product inventory, more choice, recommendations, delivery and fulfilment? This is where we play, and where we must win.”
Since its origins in 2007, Rocket Internet’s range of activity has covered 3 different types of business models:
• E-commerce: Lazada (South-East Asia), Jumia (Africa) and Linio (Latin America) are the copycat venture of Amazon ; Zalando (Europe), Zalora (South-East Asia) and Dafiti (Brazil) are the copycat venture of Zappos
• Marketplace: Wimdu is the copycat venture of Airbnb
• Finance: Lendico is the copycat venture of Lending club
Ventures are designed to be sustainably profitable on their own but Rocket Internet may choose to exit and sell them to competitors as well. Successful exits include for example: CityDeal (sold to Groupon in exchange of shares), GratisPay (Offerpal clone sold to SponsorPay) or LadenZeile (Axel Springer AG acquired 78% for 40 million …show more content…
Launched in the summer of 2012, Rocket hired employees for the e-store in the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. About a year after its emergence OfficeFab was shut down by the company’s HQ. According to former co-founder of OfficeFab Vietnam, Mike Portanova, “the main issue presented with the OfficeFab business model in South East Asia was logistics. The office supplies market in most SEA countries relied on same-day delivery (usually with an hour or two) which made this model very difficult and costly to scale. The second issue at OfficeLab came from weak law enforcement which encouraged competitors and clients not to pay taxes, resulting in a large grey and black market. Essentially, OfficeLab was priced out of the market by this
HOW CAN ROCKET INTERNET TRANSFROM ITS “FIRST FOLLOWER ADVANTAGE” INTO A LASTING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN EMERGING INTERNET COUNTRIES?
Author: Florent Labiale
E-commerce class - Fall 2014 / Ming-Hui Huang
Department of Information Management, National Taiwan University
Part I: Rocket Internet, the« start-up factory »
Rocket Internet was started in 2007 by the famous Samwer brothers who built high-growth companies which were acquired by eBay, Groupon (Citydeals) and News Corporation. Today, after less than 7 years of existence, Rocket Internet employs more than 20,000 people across their network of companies, which operates in more than 100 countries on five continents. Last September, Rocket Internet’s …show more content…
As stated by Oliver Samwer: “The first wave of this innovation is in the business model – online marketplaces, digital publishing, e-commerce, peer to peer lending etc. These are completely new ways of doing business, created by true visionaries. As these industries mature, like any industry, innovation doesn’t stop, it just moves down the chain into execution, operations and delivery. How do you do it better, faster, deliver better service for the customers, provide more product inventory, more choice, recommendations, delivery and fulfilment? This is where we play, and where we must win.”
Since its origins in 2007, Rocket Internet’s range of activity has covered 3 different types of business models:
• E-commerce: Lazada (South-East Asia), Jumia (Africa) and Linio (Latin America) are the copycat venture of Amazon ; Zalando (Europe), Zalora (South-East Asia) and Dafiti (Brazil) are the copycat venture of Zappos
• Marketplace: Wimdu is the copycat venture of Airbnb
• Finance: Lendico is the copycat venture of Lending club
Ventures are designed to be sustainably profitable on their own but Rocket Internet may choose to exit and sell them to competitors as well. Successful exits include for example: CityDeal (sold to Groupon in exchange of shares), GratisPay (Offerpal clone sold to SponsorPay) or LadenZeile (Axel Springer AG acquired 78% for 40 million …show more content…
Launched in the summer of 2012, Rocket hired employees for the e-store in the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. About a year after its emergence OfficeFab was shut down by the company’s HQ. According to former co-founder of OfficeFab Vietnam, Mike Portanova, “the main issue presented with the OfficeFab business model in South East Asia was logistics. The office supplies market in most SEA countries relied on same-day delivery (usually with an hour or two) which made this model very difficult and costly to scale. The second issue at OfficeLab came from weak law enforcement which encouraged competitors and clients not to pay taxes, resulting in a large grey and black market. Essentially, OfficeLab was priced out of the market by this