Rocket Internet’s earnings: small numbers but strong growth in Asia

In Rocket Internet’s first earnings report since its October IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the German startup dynamo today revealed some detailed numbers on its leading startup services.

In Asia, Rocket Internet’s data shows strong growth – albeit from relatively tiny base figures. Most of its main sites, such as Zalora and Foodpanda, are aimed at emerging nations where ecommerce is still struggling to gain hold, such as Indonesia or India. As a result, the sales volume on these sites are nowhere near Amazon or Alibaba levels.

Rocket’s strongest Asia venture, the Amazon-esque Lazada which runs in seven Asian nations, saw its shoppers spend EUR 71 million (US$91.4 million) in the six months that make up H1 2014. That’s a modest average of US$500,000 per day.

Not all of Rocket’s sites are covered in the earnings report (view PDF, or see embedded below. Or check out the 107-slide presentation deck.) Here are the four main ones for Asia:

Zalora

Zalora, which sells clothing in 10 Asian nations, saw shoppers spend EUR 56 million (US$70.1 million) in H1, up 44 percent from the same period in 2013 (the technical term is gross merchandise volume, or GMV). It produced 1.5 million orders from its 1.2 million active users during H1.

Revenues hit EUR 43.9 million (US$55 million) during the timeframe in question and it’s on course to pass the 2013 total. Earnings calculated as EBITDA hit negative EUR 33.5 million (US$41.9 million), but that loss has more than halved since the whole of 2013.

Jabong

Jabong, the fashion estore for India, saw faster growth than Zalora, with GMV rising 195 percent year-on-year to INR 5.1 billion (US$81 million). Orders grew 171 percent to 3.2 million. There’s no data for active users.

EBITDA hit minus INR 1.57 million (US$129,000), which is slightly worse than the loss in H1 2013. (Update: corrected billion to million in the preceding sentence.)

See: New record for world’s biggest shopping day as Alibaba’s shoppers spend $9.3 billion in 24 hours

Lazada

Lazada saw GMV of EUR 71 million (US$91.4 million), up 202 percent from H1 2013. It generated 1.8 million orders from its 1.4 million active users.