The backer and incubator of several FinTech companies Rocket Internet has had a smashing start of 2019.
The Berlin-based startup investor has announced its results from H1 2019. Between January and June, it netted ?528m ($605m) in profit. The winnings came as many of the companies it backed sold shares to the public.
Global Fashion Group,?the?fashion e-commerce company, went public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in July?and raised net proceeds worth ?186m ($205m).
Jumia, the pan-African e-commerce platform, grew its gross merchandise volume to ?521m ($575.4m), representing a?64% increase from the H1 2018. The ?marketplace grew by a smashing 96% in the same time. Its number of active consumers jumped from?3.2 million in H1 2018 to 4.8 million in H1 2019.
The e-commerce platform is one of the key drivers behind how?Africa?is?emerging as a FinTech startup hub. Between 2014 and the fist half of 2019, Jumia raised $554.m. Comparatively, $849.8m was invested in the African sector as a whole during that period.
Commenting on Rocket Internet results in the first half of 2019, Oliver Samwer, founder and CEO of the incubator, said, “The first six month have been a good start to the year. With 15 new internet-based business models incubated since January 2018, we continue to pursue our core strategy of operationally developing new business models in the tech space.”
In May 2018, Rocket Internet raised a new ?2.6bn ($2.8bn) fund to invest in FinTech and artificial intelligence-powered startups. It has previously participated in the ?1.2m funding round in the London-based PropTech startup Nested.
The German FinTech sector has grown massively over the last decade and sky-rocketed in 2019. Having played second fiddle to the UK in terms of being Europe’s leading FinTech hub, things may be about to change after?Brexit?as Germany is seemingly catching up, albeit slowly.
For one thing, investment levels in the country has jumped significantly over the past?few years.?The German FinTech sector attracted?$158.4m worth of investment in 2014, according to FinTech Global’s own research.?That figure jumped to?$927.1m last year. The sector has already seen over?$2bn injected into the?country’s FinTech companies?over the first six months of 2019.?
Comparatively, The UK’s FinTech sector grew?from ?668.5m in 2014 to ?3.6bn in 2018,?according to?FinTech Global own research.?British FinTech firms?attracted investments worth ?2.69bn in the first six months of 2019. The number of transactions declined by 7.9% from 291 deals in 2017 to 268 in 2018.?From 2016 to 2017, the average deal size saw the most sizable increase, almost trebling from ?3.8m to ?11.1m.
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