Rocket Internet says making progress to limit losses

German ecommerce firm Rocket Internet said it was on track to make three of its start-ups profitable by the end of 2017 as it reported revenue rose 69 percent in 2015 to 2.4 billion euros ($2.70 billion). While all of its start-ups are still loss-making, Rocket said it saw an improvement in their adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) margin of an average 6 percentage points in 2015. It reiterated that 2015 should represent the peak of the losses of its major start-ups and repeated a target that three of those firms should be profitable by the end of 2017. It added that it had a cash balance of 1.8 billion euros at the end of 2015 and access to co-investment capital from a fund it set up in January, which it said now had commitments of $742 million, up from a previous $420 million. Recently, e-commerce giant Alibaba bought a controlling stake in Southeast Asian online retailer Lazada Group for about $1 billion. Lazada was founded by Rocket Internet in 2012 and managed to create a successful, multi-market player in a region which needs scale and breadth to be viable. Rocket Internet is known for funding and ultimately selling start-ups that follow the model of successful existing businesses.   With inputs from Reuters