Lazada Group expands Philippine operations

The Lazada Group, which claims to operate Southeast Asia’s largest online shopping mall, is poised to further expand its operations in the Philippines, which the company considers a “very promising market” in the region.

In a recent briefing, Lazada Philippines co-founder and CEO Inanc Balci said the company planned to expand its own delivery service, Lazada Express, to cover more areas, particularly in the Visayas and Mindanao.

Lazada currently uses the delivery services of LBC and 2GO for nationwide deliveries.

Balci said the company also wants to become more aggressive with its “marketplace” to further boost sales.

The marketplace allows Lazada to sign up local entrepreneurs wanting to sell their products online and feature these on its website.

Lazada also plans to boost its infrastructure and marketing efforts, and put up three more distribution centers to enable the company to ship its products faster to its customers.

These centers will complement Lazada’s warehouse in Muntinlupa.

These initiatives, according to Balci, will be partly funded by the $250 million in capital recently infused by new investors in the Lazada Group.

“Southeast Asia is the most exciting part of the world today. While the rest of the world was having problems, Southeast Asia was flourishing, The Philippines, in particular, has an economy that is doing very well, a large population of 100 million and English is widely spoken,” Balci explained.

“There is very little e-commerce penetration so there is still a huge potential. We still want to serve more of the population here,” he added.

The Lazada Group, which operates in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, features over 50,000 products on its website.  Amy R. Remo