
Rocket Internet founders back 3 businesses with new fund
Rocket Internet's founders Oliver and Marc Samwer are understood to have invested a total of $5m in online start-ups Lingoda, GirlMeetsDress and Videdressing.com via their new €150m Global Founders Capital (GFC) fund.
Oliver and Marc Samwer launched the new venture capital fund earlier this year. Teaming up with the brothers is Fabian Siegel, former CEO of Delivery Hero, who is also a partner at the Munich-based GFC.
The fresh funding round in Videdressing.com comes five months after Earlybird Ventures, DN Capital, Piton Capital and Generis Capital invested a joint $6m in the French-American start-up.
Videdressing.com is an an online platform allowing users to sell and buy second-hand clothing and accessories. It currently hosts 400,000 items from more than 1,700 brands. Meryl Job and Renaud Guillerm founded the website in 2009.
GirlMeetsDress is an internet luxury retailer, also founded in 2009, which rents out high-end fashion designers' dresses and accessories to customers. Anna Bance is the platform's co-founder.
Lingoda is also an online start-up. The English learning platform, which offers language courses taught by native speakers, is based in Berlin. Fabian Wunderlich is the firm's CEO and co-founder.
GFC's maiden investment was a capital injection in German real-time scoring technology provider Kreditech, alongside Blumberg Capital, Point Nine Capital and H2 Investments, in April this year.
The Samwer brothers founded Rocket Internet, the German incubator behind start-ups such as Zalando. Oliver Samwer also worked on start-ups such as Alando, which was later sold to Ebay; Jamster, which was sold to New Corp; and Citydeal, which was acquired by Groupon.
Marc Samwer also worked on Alando and joined Ebay after the Alando deal as CEO for the DACH region.
GFC was unavailable for comment.
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