Rocket Internet-incubated South-east Asian e-tailer Lazada raises $100M

South-east Asia-focused horizontal e-tailer Lazada has raised $100 million in funding led by Verlinvest, a Belgian family-owned and consumer-focused investment holding company. Existing investors Holtzbrinck Ventures, Kinnevik, Summit Partners and Tengelmann Group also participated in the round.

Founded last year, Lazada is present in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, and claims to have surpassed the 1 million orders mark recently. A large part of the capital raised will be put in the fulfilment infrastructure, as per the official statement. The company also claims to ship 9 per cent of orders on the same day and is looking to streamline the delivery time further.

Along with the investment, the startup has also announced its mobile application for shopping. Currently, it is an Android app but the company will soon come up with an iOS version. "Mobile commerce is representing more than 10 per cent of e-commerce in the US and we expect this to develop even faster in the South-east Asia where many users only have access to the internet through smartphones," said Stein Jakob Oeie, chief marketing officer of Lazada, while commenting on the new app.

"We are extremely happy to have finalised this investment round shortly after our first year anniversary. The interest in joining this round and its quick closing have exceeded all our expectations," said Maximilian Bittner, CEO of Lazada.

This is the third funding in a row in Rocket Internet-incubated startups in less than two months. Last month, Rocket-backed and South-east Asia-focused fashion & lifestyle e-tailer Zalora raised $100 million from Summit Partners, Investment AB Kinnevik, Verlinvest and Tengelmann Group. Before that, Foodpanda, a multi-location food ordering site also backed by Rocket Internet, raised $20 million from a group of investors including Investment AB Kinnevik, a Sweden-based investment company, and Phenomen Ventures, a Russia-based venture capital firm.

With the German group attracting a string of external investors for its ventures, it is to be seen if its India ventures can also trigger fresh funding initiatives.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)