Ah good old Rocket Internet. Used to deal quite a lot with them back in the days.

For all the ethically ambiguous things they do, I still remember fondly their creative ways of using AdTech.

Missing morals seems like a critical enabling technology of creative AdTech.

There is nothing wrong with competition. Read Smith.

Depends on what you classify as "competition".

Theft, sabotage, ad hominem attacks, even murder, could all be considered "competition" if your ethics and morals are on a different plane.

So saying there is nothing wrong with competition as a blanket dismissal is a bit myopic.

Are you accusing Rocket of any of those? They're famous for cloning business plans, but I wasn't aware they went beyond that.

IIRC Agriya was much popular compared to Rocket Internet in this business

That depends on the circumstances:

Their salaries, too, put [competitors] in the same state with a merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty in competition with those who trade with a considerable one. If he sells his goods at nearly the same price, he cannot have the same profit, and at least, if not bankruptcy and ruin, will infallibly be his lot. If he attempts to sell them much dearer, he is likely to have so few customers that his circumstances will not be much mended.

-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 1.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_V/...

I heard the model was to actually sell the European copy to the original US startup as it got bigger. It was never in their interest to end up operating an actual company. This backfired on them for one of their "investments" (I think an Airbnb clone?) when the US counterpart decided to go head and head against the Rocket's copy in Europe instead of simply acquiring.

I believe this was Wimdu. Seems like they finally ended up shutting down last year.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/wimdu-rocket-internets-air...