Lazada Group

Lazada Group
Type of business Private
Headquarters Singapore
Area served Southeast Asia
Founder(s) Alexander Samwer, Marc Samwer, Oliver Samwer
Industry Internet
Services E-commerce
(Online shopping)
Website Lazada.com

Lazada.com is a privately owned Singaporean e-commerce company founded by Rocket Internet in 2011. As of 2014, Lazada Group operated sites in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam and had raised approximately US$647 million over several investment rounds from its investors such as Tesco, Temasek Holdings, Summit Partners, JPMorgan Chase, Investment AB Kinnevik and Rocket Internet.

Its sites launched in March 2012, with a business model of selling inventory to customers from its own warehouses. In 2013 it added a marketplace model that allowed third-party retailers to sell their products through Lazada's site; the marketplace accounted for 65% of its sales by the end of 2014.

History

Lazada Group was founded in 2012 by Rocket Internet in Singapore with the intention of establishing the Amazon.com business model in Southeast Asia to take advantage of the nascent online consumer market and Amazon's weak presence there;[1][2] Rocket is a German incubator that builds companies that copy the business models of successful US tech companies in emerging markets.[1][3][4] Lazada's e-commerce websites soft launched in 2012 in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.[5] It raised four rounds of funding in 2012 and early 2013: JP Morgan invested an undisclosed amount in September, Swedish retailer Kinnevik invested $40 million in November, German private equity firm Summit Partners invested $26 million in December, and Tengelmann invested about $20 million in January 2013.[6] It also added a 2-day guaranteed delivery services, addressing one of the most common complaints about Lazada's service,[6] and one of its biggest challenges, which it had attempted to address by making a "massive, incalculable investment" in warehouses and delivery services.[7]

In June 2013, Lazada announced it had raised an additional $100 million, and it launched mobile applications for Android and iOS devices.[8][9] In December 2013 it raised an additional $250 million from Tesco PLC, Access Industries, and other existing investors.[10]

In May 2014, Lazada launched in Singapore, its sixth country.[11][12]

In November 2014 Temasek Holdings in Singapore led a funding round of $250 million,[13] bringing the total Lazada had raised to approximately $647 million.[13][14] Also that month, Lazada announced that its marketplace platform accounted for more than 65% of its overall sales,[15] and that the number of third-party sellers on the platform had increased from ~500 in November 2013 to close to 10,000 in December 2014.[16][17] The number of employees across the region reached approximately 4,000.[17]

For 2014, Lazada's net operating losses were $152.5 million on net revenues of $154.3 million.[18] However its percentage of losses relative to its Gross Merchandise Volume - the value of all the products sold through the site - was smaller in 2014 than in 2013 due to growth in its GMV from $95 million in 2013 to $384 million in 2014, driven by marketplace sales.[18][19]

As of 2015, Lazada's challenges for growth were the preference for brick and mortar shopping among customers, with just about 1% of people buying online compared to 10% of US shoppers; the lack of credit cards and concomitant requirement to arrange cash on delivery systems, reliable delivery especially in rural regions, and the threat of competition from Amazon and Alibaba.[20]

In March 2016 Lazada claimed it recorded a total of $1.36 billion in annualized across its six markets in Asia, making it the largest e-commerce player.[21]

In April 2016, Alibaba Group announced that it intended to acquire a controlling interest in Lazada by paying $500 million for new shares and buying $500M worth of shares from existing investors.[22] The British supermarket company Tesco confirmed the sale of 8.6% of its holding in Lazada to Alibaba for $129 million.[23] The reasons why Alibaba was interested are: South-East Asia market has growing middle class income populations estimated 190 million people in the region with a disposable income of $16-$100 a day to grow to 400 million people in 2020,[24] Lazada has also figured out how difficult it is in South East Asia, for Alibaba, this helps to save billions by investing from Lazada instead of re-building the e-commerce for this market with the logistics and infrastructure to replicate the China market, and lastly China sellers from Alibaba can also have access to new sellers and buyers from Lazada, this is beneficial to both companies.

References

  1. 1 2 Ryan Mac (Jul 31, 2014). "Germany's Samwer Brothers To Become Billionaires With Rocket Internet IPO". venturebeat.com.
  2. ↑ Ingrid Lunden (Nov 12, 2012). "Samwers' Online Shopping Mall Lazada Gets $40M From Shareholder Kinnevik To Push The Amazon Model In Asia". TechCrunch.
  3. ↑ Terence Roth (Mar 23, 2016). "The E-Commerce Icarus". handelsblatt.com.
  4. ↑ Max Chafkin for Inc. May 29, 2012 Lessons From the World's Most Ruthless Competitor
  5. ↑ Jon Russell for NextWeb. March 20, 2012 T-minus 10: Rocket Internet’s ecommerce clones are aiming to conquer Southeast Asia
  6. 1 2 Jon Russell (Jan 22, 2013). "Lazada, Rocket's Amazon clone in Asia, raises 'close to $20m' to develop its e-commerce marketplace". thenextweb.com.
  7. ↑ Susan Cunningham for Forbes. December 22, 2013 Lazada, Tesco and the Logic of Logistics
  8. ↑ "Rocket Internet's e-commerce giant Lazada raises $100M". Jun 20, 2013.
  9. ↑ "Lazada launches mobile shopping app for Android OS". nationmultimedia.com. Jun 19, 2013.
  10. ↑ Newley Purnell (December 1, 2014). "Lazada Group Raises $249 Million, Led by Singapore's Temasek". Digits - Wall Street Journal.
  11. ↑ Vanessa Tan (May 27, 2014). "Lazada launches in Singapore with a new site and logo". Tech In Asia.
  12. ↑ Victoria Ho (Jun 4, 2014). "Lazada launches in its home ground of S'pore". asiaone.com.
  13. 1 2 Jon Russell (Nov 29, 2014). "Lazada, Rocket Internet's Amazon Clone In Southeast Asia, Raises $250M Led By Temasek". TechCrunch.
  14. ↑ Rebecca Grant (Dec 9, 2013). "Amazon clone Lazada raises jaw-dropping $250M to mainstream e-commerce in Southeast Asia". venturebeat.com.
  15. ↑ Min Jie Yaw (Nov 7, 2014). "Lazada's Marketplace platform accounts for 65% of its sales revenue". e27.com.
  16. ↑ Claire Huang (Nov 6, 2014). "Lazada grows revenue and stable of online 3rd-party sellers". nationmultimedia.com.
  17. 1 2 "Lazada.com.ph celebrates 3rd year via shopping extravaganza". Business World Online. Mar 23, 2015.
  18. 1 2 Susan Cunningham for Forbes. May 12, 2015 Rocket's Lazada And Zalora Lost $235.3 Million In 2014 But Are Moving Toward Profitability
  19. ↑ Steven Millward (Mar 20, 2015). "Shoppers on Lazada last year spent $350 million as ecommerce booms in Southeast Asia". techinasia.com.
  20. ↑ Staff, The Economist. Mar 7 2015 Home-field advantage
  21. ↑ "Lazada claims to be SEA's No 1 e-commerce player".
  22. ↑ Lulu Yilun Chen and Selina Wang for Bloomberg News. April 12, 2016 Alibaba Expands in Southeast Asia With $1 Billion Lazada Deal
  23. ↑ "Tesco starts sell-off ahead of results with Asian disposal". BBC News. 12 April 2016. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  24. ↑ "Southeast Asia's middle class is diverse, confident, and growing richer by the day". Retrieved 2016-07-04.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/16/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.