Alibaba\u00a0\u00a0is increasing its control of\u00a0Lazada,\u00a0\u00a0its e-commerce marketplace in Southeast Asia it acquired control of in 2016, after it injected another $2 billion into the business and replaced its CEO with a long-standing Alibaba executive.<\/p>\n
Alibaba\u2019s first investment came in April 2016 when\u00a0it bought 51 percent of Lazada for $1 billion, and\u00a0it added another $1 billion\u00a0last summer to increase its equity to around 83 percent. With today\u2019s news, Alibaba has invested $4 billion to date which it said will \u201caccelerate the growth plans\u201d and help further tie the Lazada business into Alibaba\u2019s core e-commerce service.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s already been plenty of evidence of increased ties between Alibaba and Lazada. The latter began offering products from Alibaba\u2019s Taobao marketplace across Southeast Asia last year, and\u00a0Alibaba has replaced Lazada\u2019s tech team leadership\u00a0with executives of its own. The latest shakeup is the appointment of\u00a0Lucy Peng as Lazada\u2019s new CEO to replace Max Bittner, who was installed by former owner Rocket Internet back in 2012.<\/p>\n
Peng, who is one of Alibaba\u2019s original 12 founders, has been Chairwoman of Lazada and is executive chairman of Ant Financial, Alibaba\u2019s fintech affiliate company.\u00a0Bittner will remain involved as \u201csenior advisor to Alibaba Group\u201d and apparently involved in future strategy, including further international expansion opportunities.<\/p>\n
Lazada has progressed significantly since Alibaba\u2019s first investment \u2014\u00a0which came at a time when the business had been close to running out of money\u00a0\u2014 but the reality in Southeast Asia is that e-commerce in the region is a loss-making industry with plenty of competition.<\/p>\n
Amazon entered the foray last year, but\u00a0it remains only in Singapore, while Shopee is a two-year-old entrant bankrolled by Sea, formerly Garena, which\u00a0raised over $1 billion in a U.S. IPO\u00a0last year.<\/p>\n
Alibaba hasn\u2019t just limited its Southeast Asia approach to backing Lazada.\u00a0The firm also invested $1.1 billion in Tokopedia\u00a0which competes with Lazada in Indonesia, Southeast Asia\u2019s largest economy and the world\u2019s fourth most populous country.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: TechCrunch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alibaba\u00a0\u00a0is increasing its control of\u00a0Lazada,\u00a0\u00a0its e-commerce marketplace in Southeast Asia it acquired control of in 2016, after it injected another $2 billion into the business and replaced its CEO with a long-standing Alibaba executive. Alibaba\u2019s first investment came in April 2016 when\u00a0it bought 51 percent of Lazada for $1 billion, and\u00a0it added another $1 billion\u00a0last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":410867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[106],"tags":[3496,11546,18076],"yoast_head":"\n