I have spent the last two years in South East Asia, setting up a online business, based in Singapore. During those two years, it has become very clear to me, that South East Asia, and many of the other markets, that Rocket Internet is investing in, are very immature, og slow growing.

Zalando became a succes for many reasons, but one of the reasons was that Zalando entered markets, that were quite mature. They still had to burn a lot of money to get the right kind of market share — but the big difference was, and is, that there was a market.

In South East Asia, the market is not there. So path to profitability is much much longer. Meanwhile, Lazada, and now also Zalora ran out of cash. Foodpanda, Easytaxi etc. are other examples of their failures. Rocket Internet are champions in getting funding — and spending money. Not much else, anymore.