Southeast Asia e-tailer Lazada raises $100M in funding
Online retailer, which bills itself as the "Amazon of Southeast Asia," hopes to tap a market where online shopping has yet to gain traction.
Lazada, an online retail sales business focusing on Southeast Asia, says it has raised another $100 million from investors apparently confident of the region's growth potential.
The e-commerce site, which bills itself as the "Amazon of Southeast Asia," was launched in early 2012 by Germany's Rocket Internet, which specializes in launching e-commerce sites, mostly in emerging markets. Like Amazon, Lazada offers consumer electronics, household goods, toys, and sports equipment.
While online shopping is popular in other regions of the world, the company estimates that Southeast Asians still do 99 percent of their shopping offline. Lazada CEO Maximilian Bittner told Reuters he hopes to change that.
"We see the same positive trends across the region," Bittner said Wednesday. "What a country like Vietnam or Indonesia may not have in GDP they make up for in enthusiasm for online."
Bittner said the funding would go toward improving logistics and the group's supply chain.
The round, the company's largest to date, was led by previous investors Holtzbrinck Ventures, Kinnevik Investment, Summit Partners, Tengelmann Group, and new investor Verlinvest. The latest round brings Lazada's total funding to more than $236 million.