Since February, the Swedish investment house Kinnevik has been holding 12% of Rocket Internet (Zalando, 7Trends, FP Commerce, etc). The option exists to raise this share to 25%. This is according to the 6 month report (PDF):

"In February Kinnevik completed the acquisition of shares and warrants in the online group European Internet Holding ("EIH") (previously Rocket Internet) for EUR 35 m.

The investment gives Kinnevik the right to acquire 25% of the company if all warants are exercised. Kinnevik has also directly invested EUR 5 m in two of EIH's portfolio companies.

Quelle: Kinnevik Investor Presentation Q2 2010

EIH has a portfolio of e-commerce companies and other consumer-oriented online businesses, including an ownership in e-commerce company Zalando.

Kinnevik works closely with EIH and actively supports it in becoming the leading European online company."

Extrapolating from the 12% acquisition, the valuation of Rocket Internet at that time was 292 million euro.

Kinnevik, with a 2 million euro stake, was one of the shareholders of the Groupon aquired Citydeal. The remaining 3 million euro of direct investment went towards tariff comparison company R2 International, which Kinnek currently holds 20% of.

Related posts:

• How the Samwers are Spinning Their Pan-European Investor Network
• Groupon Fever: CityDeal Gets Another 5 Million Euro

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.