US financial firm JP Morgan has continued backing Germany-based incubator Rocket Internet’s portfolio, with its latest investment, a stake in Lazada, the Southeast Asian equivalent of Amazon.
VentureVillage reports (from a source at Rocket Internet) that the investment is a double-digit million sum. This would bring JP Morgan’s total reported recent investment in Rocket to between $125m and $165m.
JP Morgan’s investments include: a $20m investment in Australian and New Zealand online fashion retailer Iconic in a cash-for-equity swap, an undisclosed investment in European Zalando, a $45m stake in Brazilian online fashion retailer Dafiti and an investment in Lamoda, the Russian equivalent of Amazon which according to Russian news provider Kommersant, was worth between $40m to $80m
JP Morgan Asset Management, as of June 30 2012, has assets under supervision of approximately $2.0 trillion and assets under management of $1.3 trillion. JP Morgan Asset Management offers global investment management in equities, fixed income, real estate, hedge funds, private equity and liquidity.
Rocket internet is a German online start-up incubator founded in 2007. In May, Russian-American billionaire Leonard Blavatnik, through his US-based industrial holding company Access Industries, committed $200m to Rocket.