Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce behemoth, has set a goal for its Southeast Asian marketplace Lazada to reach $100 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV), or the total sum of purchasing transactions.
The target, which was announced to investors on Thursday and then made public in an online presentation, raises the stakes for the company, which entered the region via purchase in 2016 and faces stiff competition.
According to the presentation, Lazada produced $21 billion in GMV from September 2020 to September 2021. It also aspires to service 300 million clients, which would be almost twice its current number.
In comparison, the market leader in the region, Sea Ltd’s Shopee, achieved $35.4 billion in GMV for the entire calendar year 2020.
According to the presentation, the division is the third-largest player in Southeast Asia, behind MercadoLibre Inc and Shopee.
Since Alibaba purchased Lazada, the company’s top management has changed twice, with two CEOs stepping down before current CEO Chun Li came over in 2020.
Jiang Fan, who previously oversaw Alibaba’s main Taobao and Tmall divisions, was named to lead a newly formed international digital commerce operation that will comprise Lazada and AliExpress, the company’s e-commerce site targeting sections of Europe and South America, earlier this month.
On Friday, Toby Xu, who is scheduled to replace longstanding CFO Maggie Wu, will make his first major public statements at Alibaba’s two-day investor event. Daniel Zhang, the company’s CEO, will also speak.
