Rocket Internet to lead the Asian start-up wave

Despite having more than 20 start-ups backed by it in Asia, German start-up investor Rocket Internet has no plans of stopping. It has now announced that its Asia Pacific sister firm APACIG which is a joint venture with Qatari telco Ooreedo having 50% stake by Rocket, is going to launch a new start-up every quarter in the pan-Asian region.

The first step emerging from this announcement is the lifting of Vaniday, an online marketplace for beauty and wellness professionals to Australia. Earlier, the company was operating in five nations outside Asia after initially launching in Brazil. Moreover, the company has also announced that it will soon expand to Southeast Asia.

While Rocket is surely adding aggressive growth to the start-up ecosystem, not all is working out as planned. Easy Taxi, a ride-hailing app that focuses on tapping the licensed city cabs market has been struggling in Asia and has already pulled out of Hong Kong, Indonesia and India. Rival companies like Uber, Ola and Grab Taxi who follow a cab-aggregator model are giving strong competition to the Rocket-backed start-up.

“We are operating in highly diverse markets – from very developed ones such as Singapore and Australia to rising stars such as Myanmar and Pakistan,” says Hanno Stegmann, CEO of APACIG .