Rocket Internet, the Samwer brothers’ startup incubator, is combining five of its regional ecommerce companies into a single business, Rocket announced on Thursday (Sept. 4).
The new global fashion ecommerce group, dubbed GFG, will bring together Dafiti (which operates in Latin America), Jabong (India), Lamoda (Russia and the CIS), Namshi (Middle East), and Zalora (South East Asia and Australia). GFG will have global reach and will share resources and expertise among the five regional divisions, which have experience ranging from creation of private-label brands (Jabong and Zalora), best-in-class mobile applications (Namshi) and building last-mile delivery networks (Lamoda), the company said
However, those divisions will retain their individual business models, inventories and branding, and current management teams for each division will remain in place, VentureBeat reported.
The five GFG businesses together have a combined valuation of about $3.5 billion, 4.6 million customers and more than 7,000 employees.
Two weeks ago, Rocket consolidated its control of four of the GFG companies (Lamoda, Dafiti, Jabong and Namshi) by swapping 2.5 percent of its own shares for the shares of those companies owned by Holtzbrinck Ventures. The fifth company, Zalora, was largely controlled by Investment AB Kinnevik, Rocket’s second-largest shareholder after the Samwers. The largest shareholders in GFG will be Kinnevik (with 25.1 percent), Rocket (23.5 percent) and Access Industries 7.4 percent).
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