Singapore, 16th January 2014 – Lazada, Southeast Asia’s biggest online shopping mall, today announced the expansion of its mobile repertoire with the launch of an app for iPhone and iPad across the region. This launch follows Lazada’s recent investment round of approximately US$ 250 million from investors including retail giant Tesco.

The success of Lazada’s app for Android has prompted the creation of this new app for both iPhone and iPad. Fully optimized for iOS 7, the app allows on-the-go shoppers to seamlessly navigate Southeast Asia’s broadest brand and product assortment across several categories including consumer electronics, gadgets, apparel, shoes and accessories. Customer experience and convenience have always been the highest priority at Lazada and this app launch further adds on to this by offering:

“Driven by the explosive development of low-cost smartphones and tablets we are witnessing technology leapfrogging in the region. Lazada’s mobile traffic has more than tripled in the last 12 months and already delivers a significant share of our revenues”, says Maximilian Bittner, CEO of the Lazada Group. “We believe that mCommerce is the future of online shopping. We have acknowledged the customers’ needs and the great convenience mobile offers – that is why we are now launching our new app for iPhone and iPad.”

According to a study conducted by Nielsen in September 2013, Southeast Asians spend an average of more than 3 hours per day on smartphones.

The new Lazada app for iPhone and iPad is available free of charge from 16th January 2014 onwards.Within the first 72 hours of the launch, users downloading the app will get an exclusive discount of RM30 on any purchase with a minimum spend of RM70. Additionally, Lazada plans to surprise three lucky shoppers who have made a purchase through the new app by giving away three vouchers worth RM500. This lucky draw is eligible to shoppers purchasing using the app from 19 to 31 January.

About Lazada
Lazada is Southeast Asia´s largest online shopping mall and is pioneering e-commerce by providing a fast, convenient and secure online shopping experience combined with an extensive product offering in categories ranging from mobiles & tablets and consumer electronics to household goods, toys, fashion and sports equipment. Lazada is continuously striving to offer its customers the best possible shopping experience with multiple payment methods including cash on delivery, extensive warranty commitments and free returns.

The post Southeast Asia’s Biggest Online Shopping Mall Further Invests in mCommerce:Lazada launches mobile shopping app for iPhone and iPad appeared first on Core Sector Communique.

Singapore, 9/12/2013 –  Lazada,  Southeast Asia’s largest online shopping mall, raises a large funding round from a group of investors including  Tesco PLC,  Access Industries,  Investment AB Kinnevik and Verlinvest,  which adds approximately US$250 million of cash to Lazada’s balance sheet.

This marks the first investment by multichannel retailer Tesco into a pure online player in the region and is the starting point of close cooperation between the parties. Synergies of this partnership will span across customer analytics, private label development and supply chain management.

Maximilian Bittner, CEO of Lazada Group, said: “We are delighted to welcome Tesco and Access to join our investor group through this funding round. That the investment is also joined by Kinnevik and Verlinvest – which know our business and operations extremely well – demonstrates that we are making great progress in building a large and sustainable company in Southeast Asia. We are excited to continue this journey together with our investors.”

“Lazada’s management team has put the company on a path to become the premier online shopping destination in Southeast Asia. We are pleased to be part of this dynamic success story,” said Jörg Mohaupt from Access Industries, in a statement.

“Strategic cooperation between long-term financial investors and industry partners can add significant growth momentum and enhanced profitability to e-commerce businesses. We welcome Tesco’s investment in Lazada and look forward to working with them in supporting Maximilian and his team,” said Mia Brunell Livfors, CEO of Kinnevik.

Robin Terrell, Group Multichannel Director of Tesco, said: “This investment in South East Asia’s largest e-commerce retailer continues our strategy of developing leading multichannel businesses in core growth markets. Lazada is an exciting, pioneering business which has developed a market-leading offer in each of its five markets in just 18 months. As South East Asia’s 600 million consumers begin to use smartphone technology to access retailers online, Lazada has established a strong position from which to grow.”

Lazada is a pioneer in Southeast Asian e-commerce with around 1,500 employees across five Southeast Asian countries. Since launch Lazada has become the leading online general merchandiser across the region. As key pillars of Lazada’s long-term strategy, the company has opened up its platform with great success to third party merchants to increase assortment and allowing both large and small suppliers take advantage of Lazada’s traffic volumes, continued building its category mix by expanding into fashion, and developed an affiliate program that will help the region’s broader web community to flourish by providing web portal and blog owners an opportunity to monetize their website.

As another key cornerstone of the Group’s strategy, Lazada also launched Lamido in Indonesia and Vietnam, to tap into the large informal e-commerce market of C2C transactions which includes thousands of shops on social networks such as Facebook.

About Lazada

Lazada is Southeast Asia’s largest online shopping mall, with operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Lazada is pioneering e-commerce in the region by providing a fast, convenient and secure online shopping experience combined with an extensive product offering in categories ranging from mobiles & tablets and consumer electronics to household goods, toys, fashion and sports equipment. Lazada is continuously striving to offer its customers the best possible shopping experience with multiple payment methods including cash on delivery, extensive warranty commitments and free returns.

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June, 20^th. LAZADA, Southeast Asia’s largest online shopping mall, today disclosed that Verlinvest, a Belgian family-owned, consumer-focused investment holding company, has joined the company as an investor. Existing investors Holtzbrinck Ventures, Kinnevik, Summit Partners and Tengelmann Group also participated in the financing round that injected about US$100 million of fresh capital into LAZADA’s German holding company.

“We are extremely happy to have finalized this investment round shortly after our 1^st year anniversary and to again focus 100% of our attention on what we enjoy most: providing an amazing shopping experience to our customers” Maximilian Bittner, CEO of LAZADA, commented. “The interest in joining this round and its quick closing has exceeded all our expectations” he added. “We are thrilled to join LAZADA as a partner of Rocket Internet and an investor, the company’s scale and achievements after only one year of operations are highly impressive. Given the management’s track record and the region’s macro outlook we are very confident in LAZADA’s future” Frédéric de Mevius, Chairman of Verlinvest, said.

LAZADA, which recently surpassed 1 million orders, has always maintained the customer experience as its main point of focus and invests heavily to provide superior services to its customers. This focus has resulted in a highly streamlined fulfilment process where currently 90% of all orders are shipped the same day and 85% of orders in metro areas are delivered within the next day. However, to further improve delivery time and increase customer satisfaction the company will use a large part of the freshly injected capital to optimize its fulfilment infrastructure in the near future.

At the same time LAZADA announced the launch of its new mobile application that provides its customers with a fast and intuitive shopping experience using a smartphone. The application is currently available for Android users and an iPhone version is soon to come. “We are very excited to launch this mobile shopping platform that provides additional convenience to our customers allowing them to shop anywhere at any time” said LAZADA’s CMO Stein Jakob Oeie. “Mobile commerce is representing more than 10% of eCommerce in the US and we expect this to develop even faster in Southeast Asia where many users only have access to the Internet through smartphones” he continued.

The application can be downloaded from Google play here.

About LAZADA

LAZADA (www.lazada.co.id, www.lazada.com.my, www.lazada.com.ph, www.lazada.co.th, www.lazada.vn) is Southeast Asia’s fastest growing online shopping mall, with operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. LAZADA is pioneering eCommerce across some of the fastest growing countries in the world by offering a fast, secure and convenient online shopping experience with a broad product offering in categories ranging from consumer electronics to household goods, toys and sports equipment. LAZADA is always striving to offer its customers the best possible offering – including multiple payment options, free returns and extensive customer service and warranty commitments.

About Verlinvest

Verlinvest (www.verlinvest.com) is a Belgian family-owned, consumer-focused investment holding company. The company is an active and flexible long-term investor, and all its shareholders are part of the AB-InBev control group. Founded in 1995, Verlinvest currently manages around €700m of assets across multiple geographies.

About Holtzbrinck Ventures

Holtzbrinck Ventures (www.holtzbrinck-ventures.com) was founded in 2000 as the venture capital arm of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and now operates as the leading German early stage fund in the fourth generation of funds. For over a decade Holtzbrinck Ventures has been supporting founders in developing their Internet businesses. During this time, Holtzbrinck Ventures has invested in over 100 businesses, among them some of today’s most successful businesses, such as Groupon, Zalando, Parship, brands4friends, Experteer, StudiVZ, MyHammer, AdScale, Wooga, eDarling and Gameduell.

About Kinnevik

Kinnevik (www.kinnevik.se) was founded in 1936 and thus embodies seventy-five years of entrepreneurship under the same group of principal owners. Kinnevik’s objective is to increase shareholder value, primarily through net asset value growth. The company’s holdings of growth companies are focused around seven comprehensive business sectors; Telecom & Services, Online, Media, Micro financing, Paper & Packaging, Agriculture and Renewable energy. Kinnevik has a long history of investing in emerging markets which has resulted in a considerable exposure to consumer sectors in these markets. Kinnevik plays an active role on the Boards of its holdings.

The Kinnevik’s class A and class B shares are listed on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm’s list for large cap companies, within the financial and real estate sector. The ticker codes are KINV A and KINV B.

About Summit Partners

Summit Partners (www.summitpartners.com) is a growth equity firm that invests in rapidly growing companies. Founded in 1984, Summit has raised nearly $15 billion in capital and provides equity and credit for growth, recapitalizations, and management buyouts. Summit has invested in more than 350 companies globally in the technology, healthcare and other growth industries. These companies have completed more than 125 public offerings, and in excess of 130 have been acquired through strategic mergers and sales. Summit Partners has offices in Boston, Palo Alto, London and Mumbai.

In the United States of America, Summit Partners operates as an SEC-registered investment advisor. In the United Kingdom, this document is issued by Summit Partners Limited, a firm authorized and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Summit Partners Limited is a limited company registered in England and Wales with company number 4141197, and its registered office is at 20–22 Bedford Row, London, WC1R 4JS, UK. This document is intended solely to provide information regarding Summit Partners’ potential financing capabilities for prospective portfolio companies.

About Tengelmann Group

Tengelmann Group (www.tengelmann.de) is an international operating retail company whose business interests are spread across a number of different industries. Subsidiaries include OBI, KiK, Kaiser’s Tengelmann, baby-markt.de and Plus Online. TREI Real Estate, as well as the holding company Tengelmann Ventures, which has been investing in promising online start-ups for several years, are also part of the corporate group. The family-owned business was established in 1867 in Mülheim an der Ruhr and is currently managed in fifth generation. Tengelmann Group is operating over 4,000 stores in 15 different countries and employing more than 80,000 people. The group’s annual turnover is totalling EUR 10bn.

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