Lazada is boosting its cross-border operations for international brands and merchants to after its cross-border sales quadrupled over the last three years. The Alibaba-owned company says it plans to bring onboard more quality international brands and will identify and nurture the top 300 brands in each of the six countries that Lazada operates in: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. This will allow those brands to grow their business and enjoy benefits such as higher visibility of their products when users search and browse the site.
“We want to serve as that bridge between our quality cross-border merchants and some 560 million consumers in Southeast Asia,” said Lazada Group’s co-president Jing Yin, speaking in Shenzhen at the company’s first cross-border seller conference for this year.
“Backed by the best expertise and infrastructure from Alibaba, as well as our in-depth understanding of Southeast Asia, we are able to equip our cross-border sellers and brands with the knowledge and tools to ride this massive growth in the region,” Yin told more than 1000 merchants at the event.
What Lazada describes as “a meteoric rise in e-commerce spending in Southeast Asia” reflects the increasing demand for cross-border products as the GMV from Lazada’s cross-border category grew by 4.6 times between 2016 and 2018. According to industry estimates, Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market is on track to hit US$240 billion by 2025, surpassing earlier estimates by $40 billion.
