Rocket Internet shuts down Singapore outfit of furniture portal Home24?
August 30, 2012 by Gwendolyn Regina T
After a series of laying off employees from their Philippine operations, German cloning titan Rocket Internet has fired more employees in Southeast Asia, this time from its Singapore base. Online furniture shopping portal Home24.sg is apparently shutting down.
We hear that several employees were fired several weeks ago and today was asked to come into the office to gather their stuff as the outfit is being closed. The website is still live though but customer service calls go unanswered.
Seems like its sneaking up on Singapore’s furniture retailers to try to capture the market didn’t work.
This is a developing story and we will update if we hear back from Rocket Internet.
Company: Rocket Internet
Rocket Internet is a Berlin headquartered company that is well-known for cloning successful online startups (usually from the US), replicating them elsewhere, and turning them into large, profitable businesses. It is active in Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Myanmar, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, India, and Pakistan.
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About The Author
Gwendolyn Regina T - Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Gwen is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of SGE. Previously, she was a partner of early stage technology investment firm, Thymos Capital and she has had two exits, one of which is iHipo. She is also an investor in Padlet, a Y-Combinator startup. Gwen also sits on the Board of Advisors for the Singapore Innovation & Productivity Institute, Steering Commmittee for the Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation Awards 2013, and Board of Advisors for Social Media Week 2013. A frequent public speaker, mentor and judge at various startup bootcamps, events and competitions, Gwen loves meeting founders, developers, designers and scientists across all ages. An alumnus of the National University of Singapore and its University Scholars Programme, Gwen also spent some time in Silicon Valley and is a graduate of the NUS-Stanford University overseas college programme. She is also a mentor at Polish tech startup incubator Gamma Rebels, the Singapore curator for US-headquartered StartupDigest and the Singapore Ambassador for the Sandbox Network - the leading global network of innovators under 30. Gwen has also been a Worldwide Judge for Imagine Cup - the premier student technology competition helmed by Microsoft. She has also spoken in Hong Kong at one of its largest youth conferences, MaD Asia, and was recently in Austria to help envision the future of the country's economy in 2032 on invitation from an Austrian governmental organization. Gwen speaks 3.25 languages, loves physics, travelling, dance and adventure sports. She can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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