Rocket Internet to launch price-comparison clone across SE Asia

Rocket Internet is set to launch a price comparison site in South East Asia called PricePanda.

The German-headquartered startup incubator has made something of a global empire for itself from cloning successful ecommerce business models.

In fact, a recent article from GigaOm pegged the number of companies owned by Rocket Internet at around 38, operating in 58 countries.

As is the case with most competing sites, PricePanda will allow people to see the prices of products across a number of ecommerce sites. The actual buying happens away from the site.

According to The Next Web, the site is ready for launch but Rocket Internet is still looking for extra business partners across the region in a bid to make sure the site has a large inventory stock.

The company already has a number of other properties in the region including the Zappos-like Zalora, and Amazon clone Lazada. It also runs the regional presence of Groupon, as it does in a number of overseas regions.

The South East Asian launches aren’t going to stop any time soon either. The Airbnb-inspired Wimdu appears to be next in line for a regional launch. Potential Ikea killer Home 24 is also primed for regional roll out, having already been released in Singapore.

The company has presences across most emerging market regions. The only region it has a relatively small presence in is Africa. That may soon be about to change.

In South Africa, it runs Zappos clone Zando, furniture store 5rooms and cosmetics testing service Glossybox.

Rocket Internet South Africa’s CTO Nils Körber told Memeburn that the company views the country as an entry-point into the rest of the continent and that it would soon reveal which country it planned to head into next.