{"id":336697,"date":"2017-03-24T20:45:33","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T12:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1468545"},"modified":"2017-03-24T20:45:33","modified_gmt":"2017-03-24T12:45:33","slug":"alibaba-gets-serious-in-southeast-asia-in-preparation-for-battle-with-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/alibaba-gets-serious-in-southeast-asia-in-preparation-for-battle-with-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"Alibaba gets serious in Southeast Asia in preparation for battle with Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Done betting, Alibaba is getting down to work in\u00a0Southeast Asia as it bids to lead the region\u2019s promising e-commerce space and maximize its\u00a0early mover advantage over Amazon.<\/p>\n

Alibaba became\u00a0the first major international\u00a0player to enter Southeast Asia, a region with more than 600 million cumulative consumers, when it bought a majority stake in Lazada<\/a>, the Rocket Internet-backed venture, nearly one year ago. Amazon, Alibaba\u2019s key foe in India<\/a>,\u00a0is still to make its move, having pushed\u00a0a planned Q1 2017 entry<\/a> back to later this year.<\/p>\n

If the\u00a0Lazada deal was a test of the water, then Alibaba is now ready to get soaked. Two\u00a0smaller (but notable) developments this week show it is executing on a plan to build out a strong presence in\u00a0Southeast Asia, where\u00a0e-commerce is forecast to\u00a0reach $88 billion by 2025, according to\u00a0a 2016 report co-authored by Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Removing Barriers, Opening Doors To China<\/h2>\n

Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma has spent the past year hobnobbing\u00a0with a range of\u00a0heads of state across the region\u2019s key countries, including\u00a0Singapore<\/a>, Thailand<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Indonesia<\/a>. This week, Ma\u2019s dabbling in politics bore its first fruit as Malaysia\u2019s government partnered with his e-commerce firm<\/a> \u2014 and its affiliates Cainiao (logistics), Ant Financial (fintech) and Lazada \u2014 to launch a series of initiatives aimed at easing redtape and barriers around\u00a0cross-border e-commerce in the country. (Malaysia\u2019s government appointed<\/a>\u00a0Ma as an economic advisor last November.)<\/p>\n

Alibaba stressed that the planned e-fulfillment hub, a physical location to handle inbound and outbound deliveries, and other aspects of the initiative \u2014 which it calls eWTP or\u00a0Electronic World Trade Platform \u2014\u00a0will benefit anyone\u00a0who sells online in Malaysia, not just Alibaba. Malaysia\u2019s zone will be linked to an existing zone in\u00a0Hangzhou, Alibaba\u2019s homestead, to enable freer exchange of goods between Malaysia and China and open up economic and social opportunities, Alibaba said.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0the firm\u2019s central involvement \u2014 it may also invest in a financial capacity \u2014 is proof\u00a0that the project\u00a0is very much strategic to Alibaba\u2019s aim of connecting Southeast Asia with China.<\/p>\n

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Malaysian Prime Minister\u00a0Najib Razak, Alibaba CEO Ma and Lazada CEO Max Bittner were among the many attendees at the free trade zone\u00a0event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On home-turf it has hundreds of thousands of sellers operating across its Taobao marketplace and other services. Taobao is already embedded in many parts of the country \u2014 over 1,000 so-called \u2018Taobao Villages\u2019<\/a> have relied on\u00a0the service to stimulate\u00a0financial regeneration \u2014 and it\u00a0could increase its\u00a0audience further still through more direct\u00a0links in\u00a0Southeast Asian.<\/p>\n

But Alibaba isn\u2019t waiting around for initiatives like that in Malaysia to get off the ground, it is already forging opportunities for Taobao in Southeast Asia. This week, it bridged Taobao with Lazada through a new feature\u00a0that debuted in Singapore.\u00a0Lazada Singapore is boosting its existing catalog of five million products with\u00a0the addition of 400,000 listings that have been selected from\u00a0Taobao.<\/p>\n

Alibaba offers a\u00a0selection of Chinese products through Aliexpress, an internationally-focused\u00a0e-commerce site, but \u2018Taobao Collection\u2019<\/a> is focused on a single market \u2014 in this case Singapore \u2014 and dedicated to solving some of the recurring\u00a0problems of selling\u00a0overseas from China.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to solve those difficulties, enabling an effortless way for them to shop. Now it\u2019s all translated into English and you don\u2019t have to worry about shipping options, payment method, returning. You are going to be able to track your order end-to-end,\u201d Lazada Singapore head\u00a0Alexis Lanternier told Bloomberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Viewed\u00a0separately, the Malaysia project and Taobao Selection are interesting developments, but, occurring in the same week, they reveal\u00a0much of the\u00a0blueprint that Alibaba has for fully optimizing\u00a0its presence in key countries in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n