DealBook: Rocket 1nternet Seeks to Raise About $967 Million in 1.P.0.

LONDON — The German technology giant Rocket Internet said on Wednesday that it planned an initial public offering that could value the company at more than 4 billion euros, or $5.1 billion.

The announcement is the latest step in the meteoric rise of the German brothers Oliver, Marc and Alexander Samwer, who started Rocket Internet in 2007 and expanded the primarily e-commerce technology business from their Berlin headquarters to more than 100 countries.

Yet while American technology entrepreneurs like Jeffrey P. Bezos, who founded Amazon in the early 1990s, introduced new ways for people to buy goods online, the Samwer brothers found success by mimicking successful Internet companies — often by applying proven ideas in emerging markets.

Over the past eight years, Rocket Internet started hundreds of Internet companies, which now collectively employ more than 20,000 people worldwide. They includes Linio, an e-commerce business in Mexico that is similar to Amazon, and Zalaro, an equivalent to Zappos, in Malaysia.

"If there's a clear business model that is proven to work, we will look at it," Oliver Samwer said in an interview this year. "Every new company is like a speedboat, and we want them to become aircraft carriers."

Rocket Internet will seek to raise €750 million through the I.P.O in Frankfurt. The Berlin-based company said its existing shareholders, which include the Swedish investment company Kinnevik, would participate in the public offering.

A recent investment by the German Internet service provider United Internet valued Rocket Internet at roughly €4.3 billion.

Unlike many European technology companies that are eager to break into the United States market, Rocket Internet has focused its attention outside America and China, where the company believes there are too many rivals to successfully compete.

Instead, the German company has spread across Europe, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region. It often hires young M.B.A. graduates to run its new businesses and provides large amounts of capital to out-muscle existing competitors.

The announcement about Rocket Internet's I.P.O. comes less than a week after Zalando, a German e-commerce company similar to Zappos, also announced that it was seeking a public offering. Zalando was part of Rocket Internet's stable of technology companies, but the company progressively sold its stake in Zalando, which generated $2.3 billion in revenue last year.

While Rocket Internet has successfully mimicked existing e-commerce ideas in emerging markets, it has had less success in other sectors. The company's version of Pinterest, for example, which allows people to share photographs and other media, has failed to win over many consumers.

And after Airbnb held talks in 2011 about acquiring Rocket Internet's Berlin-based copy, the American short-term housing website eventually decided to bolster its own international operations instead of buying the smaller rival.

Berenberg, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley are coordinating Rocket Internet's I.P.O. while Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and UBS are also helping with the offering.

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