"Unbelievable money at unbelievable valuations" is what the Samwer brothers have received from Russia. Juri Milner's investment company DST, which is known for investing huge amounts of money into promising online startups and buy small shares in later business phases, has secured a share of 4% in Zalando:
"The online shoe retailer which is run by internet entrepreneurs Oliver, Marc and Alexander Samwer has told the press on Thursday that the Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies (DST) now holds a share of 4%.
DST is one of the biggest investors in online businesses worldwide and holds, beside other investments, 7% in Facebook." [our translation]
With this step, the Samwers are promoted to a higher league. And it seems that rumours saying that they were on the hunt for a financing round worth billions were actually true:
"Indeed, we understand a key lieutenant of Yuri Milner’s DST fund was recently walked around the Rocket Internet building, meeting various staff, which would suggest the Samwers could be in talks with DST about their fund raising, though Oliver Samwer declined to comment.
As one source told us: “Oli’s great thing is his family offices investors were very supportive, but in order to go global he needs large institutional invest investors.”"
DST has investments in all major internet businesses. Last week in Davos, Bloomberg has interviewed Juri Milner, asking also whether he would be investing in Berlin.
DST's excitement for (pure play) ecommerce is considerable. We have already quoted his interview when he talked about the perspectives for China ("The Wal-Mart of China is actually going to be an online company").
Earlier posts:
- Zalando: "We generate 100m Euros per month in revenue"
- Samwer Report: Zalando-Bewertung steigt auf 1,6 Mrd. Euro (German)
- Zalando-Chef David Schneider über den Multi-Channel-Mythos (German)
- Zalando-Analyse: Wo steht Zalando heute, wo kann es hin? (German)
- Samwer Report: Wie Marketing bei Zalando & Co. funktioniert (German)
- Samwer Report: Zalando rüstet Lagerkapazitäten für 2012 (German)
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