Lazada Group

Lazada Group is a privately owned e-commerce company based in Southeast Asia. Lazada Group operates Lazada, an online shopping mall, with presence in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Since 2012, Lazada Group has raised approximately US$647 million over several investment rounds, with investors including Temasek Holdings, Tesco, Rocket Internet, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Holtzbrinck Ventures, Tengelmann Ventures, Investment AB Kinnevik, Verlinvest and Summit Partners. The company is headquartered in Singapore. 
Launched in March 2012, Lazada is Southeast Asia’s largest online shopping mall, offering a wide range of products including consumer electronics, household goods, toys, sports equipment, health and beauty, and fashion. Lazada operates a combined first-party retail and third-party marketplace model which allows third-party retailers to sell their products online using Lazada’s secure payment options, distribution networks and customer service support.
==History==
Lazada Group was founded in 2011 by Rocket Internet, the Berlin-based e-commerce startup incubator founded by German brothers Oliver, Marc and Alexander Samwer. 
In March 2012, the company launched fully operational e-commerce properties in five Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
In the second half of 2013, Lazada introduced its marketplace model - an end-to-end platform including payment, delivery and customer service enabling third-party retailers to sell their products online via Lazada. This model has facilitated growth by allowing for the rapid expansion of the company’s competitively-priced offering of products to consumers. 
In June 2013, Lazada launched a mobile application for Android devices. The company also launched an affiliate program that same month, as well as its own fleet of riders for product delivery. 
In January 2014, Lazada launched its iOS mobile application for the iPhone and iPad. 
In May 2014, Lazada launched in Singapore with eight different product categories, becoming the sixth country in Southeast Asia with a Lazada property.
In July 2014, Lazada Philippines signed an exclusive partnership with Xiaomi, making the mobile brand available in the country for the first time.
In September 2014, Lazada Indonesia offered 5,000 Xiaomi Redmi 1S phones exclusively for sale, selling out in seven minutes.
In November 2014, Lazada announced that its Marketplace platform accounted for more than 65% of its overall sales. The number of third-party sellers on the platform increased from ~500 in November 2013 to close to 8,000 in November 2014. In the same month, Lazada launched helloPay, an online payment platform, in Singapore.
In December 2014, the number of sellers on Lazada’s marketplace platform exceeded 10,000. The number of employees across the region reached approximately 4,000.
In March 2015, Lazada reached US$1 billion in annualized Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) regionally. Marketplace accounted for approximately 75% of overall sales.
In May 2015, Lazada reported over 11 million mobile application downloads regionally.
==Management team==
Lazada Group’s CEO is Maximilian Bittner. The Lazada Group's senior management team also includes Stein Jakob Oeie, CMO , Pierre Poignant, COO, Tim Rath, CCO, Sohil Gilani, CPO, Eugene Chistyakov, CTO and Michael Karb, CFO. 
==Funding==
Lazada Group has announced several rounds of funding since its launch. These included initial fundings from J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Kinnevik, Summit Partners, and Tengelmann Group. In December 2013, an additional US$250 million was raised from Tesco PLC, Access Industries, and other existing investors. In November 2014, Temasek Holdings in Singapore led a funding round of US$250 million. In total, Lazada Group has raised approximately US$647 million in funding.
== References ==
== External links ==
* Lazada website