Rocket Internet Fashion Ecommerce Startups, Lamoda & Dafiti, Get €25M From World Bank Group’s IFC

TechCrunch
Rocket Internet has secured new funding for two of its fashion-focused ecommerce startups, with a €10M investment for Lamoda, which operates predominantly in Russia and Kazakhstan, and €15M in equity investment for LatAm’s Dafiti (active in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico).
The target market of these startups is key to this funding being as it’s coming from the World Bank Group’s IFC investment arm: a global development institution which focuses on the private sector, using funding investments with the aim of helping to eliminate extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity.
That’s right, Rocket Internet is attracting funding for being an engine of economic development and job creation in emerging regions of the globe — which is rather at odds with the negative tone of some of the press the Samwer brothers’ business efforts tend to attract (whether it’s for cloning, or for its own charged working environment that apparently fuels high staff churn rates).
Also giving pause for thought: a World Bank Group poverty-alleviating institution sharing investor status with the likes of JP Morgan (JP Morgan invested in Lamoda in 2012, and also previously put $45M into Dafiti). Or not. Wealth creation has many parents (and, er, foster parents).
Read on Techcrunch