Building on its past scaling in Southeast Asia, the marketplace aims to take on rivals such as Amazon and Zalando across the European ecommerce market. According to Lazada Group Chief Executive Officer James Dong cited by Bloomberg News, its specific plans will depend on macroeconomic and market conditions. Alibaba has disclosed it invested USD 912.5 million in its Southeast Asian arm -- taking the year’s capital influx to USD 1.3 billion.
Bloomberg experts estimate that a European push for Lazada would mark a revival in Alibaba’s global efforts, which slowed in recent years in the face of competition from Amazon and Tencent.
The Chinese company registered recent hits and misses when it came to going outside of its native Southeastern market. It attempted a US expansion in retail by launching US-based 11 Main before its record 2014 IPO, only to sell the niche ecommerce site shortly after.
In 2016, Alibaba won a foothold in Southeast Asia by taking control of Lazada. In 2017, co-founder Jack Ma declared Alibaba could someday become the world’s fifth-largest economy, serving some 2 billion people. After the pandemic, accompanied by government crackdown and economic downturn Lazada registered a lower pace of growth. Bloomberg details that Ma himself became a target of Beijing, which killed Ant Group Co.’s IPO after the billionaire publicly criticized China’s state-dominated banking system in 2020.
On of the most recent and notable investments conducted by Lazada is its recent funding of Indonesian digital wallet provider DANA, in which amounted to a total of USD 304.5 million, according to a stock-exchange filing. DANA is part-owned by Jack Ma’s Ant Group and is planning to offer lending, wealth management, and insurance as it expands its portfolio, company officials stated at the time of the announcement. With this investment, the Indonesian startup also strengthened its ties with Alibaba, which owns 30% of Ant Group.
It also led a USD 168 million financing in TNG Digital, the owner and operator of Malaysia’s largest e-wallet company Touch ‘n Go.
Andy Huang, Chief Logistics Officer at Lazada Group, explained for The Paypers in February 2022 that a key focus for the group’s growth is also ecommerce logistics: ‘With at least 102 key logistics providers – both existing and emerging players – operating in Southeast Asia today, we are clearly witnessing the development of a robust ecommerce logistics ecosystem, where the introduction of innovative technologies, such as artificial intelligence and big data, promises to offer greater cost and operational efficiencies. Based on the trends outlined above, all signs seem to indicate that the addition of new logistics players and technologies will play a key role in alleviating the accelerated demand for ecommerce.’
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