Analyse Asia #143: Alibaba vs Amazon in Southeast Asia with Jon Russell
How the Lazada’s acquisition of Redmart set up the ecommerce war in Southeast Asia
Episode Synopsis: Jon Russell from TechCrunch who broke the two big stories on Lazada’s acquisition of Redmart and Amazon’s foray into Southeast Asia starting with Singapore next year, joined us on a conversation to discuss the backstory behind the event. We discussed the implications of the acquisition and how it is setting up the narrative of Alibaba vs Amazon across Southeast Asia. We examined how the ecommerce wars between two giants will impact the logistics and payments industry.
Here are the three interesting points which we discussed during this episode:
- We examined the reasons why Didi did not participate in Grab’s latest financing round. The most plausible theory is that Didi did not want to anger Uber as the latter is seeking to win the Southeast Asia and India market.
- Jon provided the backstory in how he broke the news of Lazada’s acquisition of Redmart and in the process, discovered that Amazon will be starting their operations and services in Singapore early next year in 2017. We discussed the winners and losers from the deal, and offered the plausible theories to why the acquisition is made and the other potential bidders in the process.
- The acquisition of Redmart by Lazada foreshadowed the upcoming ecommerce war between Alibaba and Amazon, and set up how the other sectors such as logistics & digital payments will be affected in the process.
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