Alibaba Sets $100 Billion GMV Target for Southeast Asian E-commerce Division to Expand Overseas

According to a Reuters report on Friday, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has set a target for gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $100 billion for its Southeast Asian marketplace Lazada. The move is meant to offset the slowdown in domestic business growth by accelerating overseas expansion.

Lazada’s active consumer base expanded almost twice as much as it was before, hitting 130 million users. The company was able to push through $21 billion in GMV from September 2020 to the same month in 2021. Even with those numbers, however, the company lags far behind Sea Ltd’s Shopee, the market leader in the region.

With more than $56 billion in GMV in four quarters to the end of September, Lazada is currently the third largest online retailer in emerging markets, behind Mercado Libre, a Latin American e-commerce platform, but ahead of Coupang of South Korea and Flipkart of India.

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Internet giants such as Lazada and Shopee are seizing the opportunity of a booming e-commerce market in Southeast Asia. According to Alibaba, the average annual growth rate of e-commerce in Southeast Asia is about 27%. According to research jointly released by Google, Temasek Holdings and Bain, the Internet economy in Southeast Asia will double to $363 billion by 2025.