The Difference Between Rocket Internet and Y Combinator

I wish there were more incubators with global reach. I am a Microsoft alum who moved to Pakistan for personal reasons and had to start out with zero funding, which is a painful exercise.

I first about Rocket Internet through a local company that was making great strides in marketing localised copies of the same products highlighted in the article (Zalando and Lazada). I never bothered to look up the company until just now and realise it's an incubator which owns the products. When the localised versions of these products launched, I was quite envious of the fact that they were flush with capital and managed to corner the market very easily using that capital.

It seems like an easy win for Rocket Internet or other similar VCs with a global mindset, especially since Pakistan doesn't post much competition for these companies due to the local of local VCs (some exist but only in namesake) or entrepreneurs in software. OLX is another company that has recently (less than 1 year) entered the market and shaken up decades old newspaper classifieds (my startup services one of the largest local newspapers).

I have always felt YC was out of reach.