Alibaba To Accelerate South East Asia eCommerce By Investing Additional $2 Billion To Lazada

Alibaba Group released a statement last week that it’ll soon add another $2 billion into Lazada as part of the group’s continuous efforts to boost their South East eCommerce expansion.

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“The investment underscores Alibaba’s confidence in the future success of Lazada’s business and the growth prospect of the Southeast Asian market, a region that is a key part of Alibaba’s global growth strategy,”  Alibaba statement.

Alibaba’s most recent move will further intensify Lazada’s alliance with Alibaba, bringing the group’s total eCommerce platform investment to at least $4 billion.

Lazada’s change of management

Lazada’s current chairwoman, Lucy Peng, will soon assume the additional role of CEO. Peng said South East Asia is a region thriving with high possibilities of growth and opportunities given its young population. On the other hand, Lazada founder Max Bittner will soon take the role of senior advisor to Alibaba Group after serving as Lazada’s CEO since 2012.

Lazada is currently the region’s leading selling and shopping online platform with a presence in various countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, The Philippines, and Vietnam. Lazada currently has at least 145,000 local and international sellers and at least 3,000 brands in its platform.

The South East region has a population of more than 650 million people who are rapidly adjusting to the internet and has seemingly endless potential for online businesses.

According to a report released by Temasek and Google, the Southeast Asia internet economy is poised to reach at least $200 billion by 2025 It’s considered as an exponential growth from a mere 2 percent of regional gross domestic product to at least 6 percent by 2025.

Alibaba also invested at least $1.1 billion in Tokopedia in August 2017. The platform is Indonesia’s largest eCommerce marketplace.

Over the next few years it looks like we are going to see many more regions experience the eCommerce boom, such as South America and South East Asia as their logistics and infrastructure get better.  Do you see this as a growth potential for your business? Head over to our Facebook Discussion Group or use the comments section below to let us know.

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