Alibaba looks to expand Southeast Asian arm Lazada to Europe – sources

div classBodysc17zpet90 cdBBJodivpBy Fanny Potkin and Brenda Gohp

pSINGAPORESHANGHAI Reuters – Alibaba Group plans to expand its Southeast Asian arm, Lazada, to Europe, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as the Chinese ecommerce company seeks further overseas growth amid slowing opportunities at home.pdivdivdiv classBodysc17zpet90 cdBBJodiv

pThe move comes months after Alibabas logistics arm, Cainiao, opened a central hub for European sales in Belgium.p

pAlibaba is already present in Europe through its global ecommerce platform, AliExpress, which mainly targets consumers looking for such goods from Chinese manufacturers as smartphone accessories and clothing.p

pLazada plans to target local European vendors, while AliExpress will continue to focus mainly on crossborder sales from China, one of the sources told Reuters. Lazada Thailand CEO James Dong will help spearhead the initiative, that person said. p

pAlibaba overseas commerce head Jiang Fan visited Singapore in April to discuss the expansion, the same source added. p

pLazada and Alibaba did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment.p

pThe sources did not specify which European countries Lazada intended to expand to. The details were being finalised, they said. They declined to be identified, as they were not authorised to speak to the media.p

pIn China, Alibaba has faced strong competition from such rivals as Pinduoduo Inc and ByteDance subsidiary Douyin, while new regulations have limited opportunities for expansion. Lazada was founded in 2012 by Germany‘s Rocket Internet technology incubator to become Southeast Asia’s answer to Amazon.com Inc. Alibaba acquired a controlling stake in it for about 1 billion in 2016 in what was the Chinese firms biggest foreign deal at the time.p

pAlibaba said in December it had set targets for the Southeast Asian marketplace of 100 billion in gross merchandise volume and 300 million users.p

pLazada generated 21 billion in gross merchandise volume in the year to endSeptember 2021 and had 159 million users, as competition intensified with larger rival Shopee, owned by Sea Ltd.p

pShopee itself has expanded globally, entering such markets as Poland, Spain and France last year. But it withdrew from India and France in March, facing a weak growth outlook.p

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pp Reporting by Fanny Potkin in Singapore and Brenda Goh in Shanghai Editing by Miyoung Kim and Bradley Perrettp

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