HONG KONG: Alibaba this week revealed an ambitious vision to grow its Southeast Asian e-commerce business to $100 billion in transacted sales as well as a pledge to reach carbon neutrality in its operations by 2030.
China’s largest e-commerce company unveiled its vision Friday for its Southeast Asian e-commerce arm Lazada in presentation slides uploaded to its site for its annual Investor Day, where it typically shares revenue figures and future strategies of its business units with investors. Alibaba’s top executive Daniel Zhang also outlined its carbon emission goals during a presentation Friday.
The plan to quintuple Lazada’s total gross merchandise volume — defined as the total amount of sales transacted on its platform — came as the Chinese company looked overseas for sources of growth amid increased competition and a slowing economy in the Chinese market.
Alibaba also eventually aims to have Lazada serve 300 million consumers, according to the presentation slides.
The Hangzhou-based firm took a controlling stake in Lazada in 2016, before investing an additional $2 billion to expand the business in 2018.
