With this investment round, the Chinese giant has injected a total of $7.7 billion into Lazada since 2016. In 2023, the Chinese e-commerce giant infused over $1.8 billion into Lazada.
This capital injection comes as players in Southeast Asia shift towards offering affordable goods to lead the e-commerce race. Lazada recently launched its new shopping channel, Choice, in 2023, a platform that directly competes with Temu and Shein for affordable deals.
Previously, Alibaba shared that the Choice platform had helped its global e-commerce site, AliExpress, achieve over 60% order growth in Q4 last year compared to the previous quarter. This trend continued into the first three months of this year.
Earlier this year, co-founder Jack Ma wrote to Alibaba employees, stating that the company was undergoing a “major surgery to cure the disease of a large corporation.” This followed Alibaba’s defeat by PDD Holdings, the parent company of Pinduoduo, in the stock market.
Since then, Alibaba has worked to simplify its business structure and improve efficiency, such as enhancing the synchronization between its logistics arm, Cainiao, and e-commerce operations.
*Vu Hao (Tech In Asia)*
