News about en-us Lamoda, the Russian online fashion site incubated by the Samwer Brothers' Rocket Internet, is upgrading its wardrobe. On Tuesday, the company is announcing a new injection of $130 million -- understood to be a record round of funding for a Russian ecommerce site, passing the $100 million that Ozon, Russia's Amazon, picked up in 2011. This latest round was led by Access Industries, the VC and holding company controlled by Len Blavatnik, with participation also from Rocket Internet regulars, Summit Partners and Tengelmann. ]]> Rocket Internet, the German-based e-commerce startup incubator from the Samwer brothers, is today announcing another round of funding for its strategy to build out its footprint into emerging markets. Today it's the turn of Middle-East-based fashion commerce site Namshi, which is getting $13 million from Summit Partners. This is the second time Summit, a Rocket regular, has invested in Namshi, after a $1 million injection in January. To date, Dubai-based Namshi appears to have raised some $34 million, if you also count the reported $20 million from JP Morgan and Blakeney Management in September 2012. A Rocket Internet spokesperson would not confirm any of the sums apart from the most recent one, except to note that previous funding totals a "high double-digit amount." ]]> The race for leadership in easy e-commerce in Europe is on. Stripe, the U.S. startup that has developed a simple payments API for developers to use in apps and on the web, is preparing to make its first steps into European waters with a beta launch. And the news comes as Rocket Internet-backed rival/clone Paymill, which also offers developers an API for simple payments (at comparable pricing), has announced a further round of funding, $5 million, from new investor Blumberg Capital, as it redoubles its effort in the region. ]]> Payleven, the mobile payment company from the Samwer bothers' Rocket Internet incubator, is now taking orders for its chip-and-PIN readers, which it says makes it one of the first of the Square-style competitors in Europe to offer quick way to comply with Visa's card payment requirements in the region. The readers were first announced in October 2012; today Payleven starts to take orders -- at a price of €49 ($65) each -- and will begin shipping them on February 18. ]]> FoodPanda, an Rocket Internet-backed online platform for aggregating and delivering food from take-out restaurants, is today announcing that it has expanded to 12 more emerging markets, taking the total number of countries that it covers to 23. The company is also in the process of raising money to help fuel the growth, essential to compete against the likes of GrubHub in the U.S., or Just-Eat or Delivery Hero based in Europe, all of which have also raised hefty funding rounds to expand their labor-intensive operations. ]]> Amazon's global march has yet to take it into emerging markets like Vietnam and Malaysia, so the Samwer brothers have smelled an opportunity to build out their own version in the absence of Amazon itself. Lazada, an Asia-focused "online shopping mall" that has come out of the bothers' German incubator Rocket Internet, is today announcing an investment of $40 million to build out its business. Lazada is already operational in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, and the news comes on the back of another, now confirmed, investment in Lazada from JP Morgan back in September, reportedly in the hundreds of millions of dollars. ]]> Less than a month after JP Morgan put investments into two Rocket Internet-baked fashion sites modelled on Zappos -- an undisclosed investment into Zalando and $45 million in Brazil's Dafiti, the bank is taking an equity stake in another Rocket Internet fashion business. Lamoda.ru in Russia, a site with 5 million unique users and 500,000 "loyal customers," is apparently raising between $40 million and $80 million from the bank. The news was announced by Lamoda itself, although the terms of the investment are only being reported by third parties. If the value is correct, it's one of the biggest yet made by JP Morgan in Rocket's ventures. Lamoda, you might recall, played an infamous part in an embarrassing email last year from Oliver Samwer, one of the founders of Rocket Internet: in a letter to employees, he made detailed references to the mistakes Lamoda had made, as a cautionary tale for those not to be repeated in other markets. Calling the new strategy a "blitzkrieg", it was a revealing and damaging email for a company that likes to play its cards close to its chest. (Witness the fact that investment and other figures and wider business strategies are rarely, if ever, revealed.) ]]> Zalando, the shoe and fashion e-commerce site originally started as a clone of Zappos by the Samwer brothers, is gearing up for another phase of growth. The company today announced that it has closed another round of funding, adding J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Quadrant Capital Advisors as its newest backers. As with past rounds of financing -- and as with many other Samwer investments -- exact financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but a Zalando spokesperson says that now both J.P. Morgan and Quadrant now each own a 1% stake in the company. Zalando's revenues in 2011 were €510 million, but it has not disclosed any figures for 2012. We are trying to find out more detail and will update this post as we learn more. ]]> Fashion For Home, the online designer furniture store, has scored a new funding round led by the Munich-based VC Acton Capital Partners, while Holtzbrinck Ventures has also participated. And with it we have an exit of sorts. That's because, as part of the round, the Samwer Brothers’ incubator, Rocket Internet, has sold its shares, although terms of the transaction aren't being disclosed -- unsurprising given the Samwer's notorious reputation for secrecy. It's also especially curious when you factor in last year's leaked memo where Oliver Samwer described ambitions to become "number one” in the ecommerce sector for furniture with a strategy he controversially likened to "blitzkrieg". Fashion For Home's new funding round as a whole is said to be in the "lower double-digit millions", so also make of that what you will.]]> ]]> ]]>