Singapore Entrepreneurs covers startups and the tech scene in Singapore and Southeast Asia, including funding news and commentary on regional business models.
The one comment is a harsh take on Rocket Internet, saying it hurts local ecosystems in emerging markets by hiring and firing talent.
They hurt local innovation and ecosystem development in emerging markets from Asia to LatAm to Africa. They come in, hire away talent only to fire them in a few weeks. they damage the budding trust the consumer has in ecommerce.
They are bullies and have a superiority complex boasting about their capacity to execute. They do not have a monopoly on execution. That's a farce.
They are greedy, selfish and generally think only of themselves. Not the consumers they serve, the local markets or their employees.
I have witnessed them come into markets, destroy the lives and dreams of entrepreneurs and employees in emerging markets and shut down abruptly.
Finally, this operation (thier ecommerce operations in particular) is a house of cards. Service quality sucks, customers are lied to and they engage in an epic waste of money
It is impossible to build online retail operations in 1-2 years. Yet this is their objective. Build fluff and sell to some unsuspecting corporate development team.
The problems groupon is facing is inextricably linked to the involvement of the samwers as far as I'm concerned. Elsewhere, flash sales and couponing operations do well. Anything these guys touch is ultimately unsustainable and fluff. Now they want to try online retail with its logistics, warehousing, etc in emerging markets without a long term horizon. Ha! In a few years time you will realize how stupid the praise in this article…