Southeast Asia’s biggest giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. plans to fund another $2 billion in Lazada Group SA and also provided with the group of most senior executives to run the business.
With the earlier investment, it will be almost $4 billion in total in the hands of Lazada groups. In accordance, some reports suggested that the chairman of Lazada, Lucy Peng, will be new CEO of the company whereas, current CEO Max Bittner will work as a senior adviser.
The increased growth of retailing and technology sector in Southeast Asia has led many international firms like Amazon Inc. and Sea Ltd. to dig its roots in the Asian markets. As per some analyst, the investment by Alibaba Ltd. to Lazada Group SA will be a threat to the rivals. On the other hand, Amazon and Sea Ltd. has launched and expanding in Singapore markets.
“This is part of its overseas expansion strategy, where it’s using a specific platform as a testing ground,” a Shanghai-based analyst said. “Now it’s going to run operations itself.”
Considering Lazada Group, it itself has some other shareholders like Temasek Holdings Pte. Whereby investing $1 billion at the start and another $1 billion by the fall of 2017, there has been increase in the equity by 83 percent in the hand of Amazon Inc.
“We feel very confident to double down on Southeast Asia,” Peng expressed in an email. “We are excited about the incredible opportunities for super-charged growth.”
Not only the huge investing group giant but also the Chinese arch-foe JD.com is targeting in the Southeast Asia regions. As per CEO of JD Richard Liu, the company is planning to be in every Southeast Asian country before the fall of the year 2018.
