The Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has announced it is going to invest 1 billion US dollars in Lazada.
Lazada is an ecommerce company that currently targets Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore and the Philippines.
The investment is a mix of buying new shares in Lazada and also buying existing shares from shareholders such as Tesco and Rocket Internet.
Alibaba hopes that the investment will help it to expand its ecommerce empire, which is currently very much focused on China.
South East Asia is an appealing market due to its rapidly rising mobile internet population.Â
