Alibaba just took a big step in its Southeast Asian expansion journey. The company said today that it has pumped a total investment of about $1 billion into Lazada, in a deal that makes it the e-commerce platform’s controlling shareholder.
This includes $500 million in newly-issued equity capital, as well as the purchase of existing shares from Lazada shareholders. Lazada is now valued at $1.5 billion, according to Kinnevik, one of its investors. In separate announcements made at the same time, Lazada shareholders Rocket Internet, Tesco, and Kinnevik each said that they had sold shares to Alibaba as part of the transaction.
