TNN(This story originally appeared in 
on Feb 03, 2016)
MUMBAI: Fashion e-tailer Jabong isn't up for sale. Instead, it may look to raise capital independently from external investors going forward, Lorenzo Grabau, CEO of AB Kinnevik, told TOI in an interview. on Feb 03, 2016)Kinnevik, the low-profile Swedish investment group which manages $9.6 billion in assets, has backed some of Europe's biggest tech names like Rocket Internet, where it owns a 13% stake, and e-commerce major Zalando. Kinnevik is confident of a turnaround at Jabong. Excerpts:
Rocket Internet's portfolio has been in trouble in India over the past six months.What is the road map going ahead?
We invested in Rocket in 2008 and took a 25% stake. The Samwer brothers (Marc, Oliver and Alexander Samwer) wanted to have a presence across 40-50 countries. So by definition, if you have such an ambitious plan which is to become the leading internet platform outside of the US and China, you are bound to have some great successes and some areas where you will find challenges.
The Indian market is very exciting but it is also a place where there are a lot of talented local entrepreneurs and management teams with deep local expertise. So a number of the businesses launched by Rocket have had some success while others haven't. However, when I speak as a Rocket shareholder, these companies have been disciplined about evaluating success on a regular basis.
What's gone wrong at Foodpanda? Reports have surfaced about financial misappropriation ...
We are not in a position to comment on Foodpanda as we are no longer a direct investor in the company , having sold our stake earlier as part of our strategy to focus on a limited number of companies.
There were talks of Jabong selling to strategics. Is that still on the cards?
At Kinnevik, our model of value-creation is built on two pillars -growth and consolidation. Growth is investing in businesses to build them and consolidation is about looking at the local marketplace and figuring out if we can clock better economics. In past few years, we've done transactions where we have merged businesses, like Avito in Russia with Nasper's classifieds vertical, thereby cutting down losses.
You should never be surprised if a company we've invested in explored opportunities for partnerships -that's our mantra. It's not a sign of weakness. The Indian ecommerce market is the most competitive, difficult and challenging in the world. Having said that, it is smart to know what other players are doing.
Has Jabong lost out to Flipkart-owned Myntra?
I don't think we starved any of our businesses because we wanted to put money in a different market. Zalando started in 2007 and went public in 2014.This is an 8-10 year journey , that's why you need long-term shareholders -there is no shortage of capital. Global Fashion Group (GFG) is our largest private investee company.
