Belgian beer families invest in Asian e-commerce

Biggest in
Southeast Asia

Lazada
claims to be the “largest online shopping mall” in Southeast Asia and is active
in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia. The site sells a
number of different products, going from make-up to toys, TVs and even
furniture. The company is only one year old and has already processed more than
one million orders.

Sister
company Zalora describes itself as “Asia’s biggest fashion webshop”. Zalora
also was founded a year and is active in the same five countries as Lazada, and
also Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Zalora says it has a “double-digit
million USD” turnover.

Both online
shops were founded by Rocket Internet, the company of German brothers Alexander
(38), Marc (42) and Olivier (39) Samwer, who have founded over one hundred
internet start-ups, including Zalando.

Just like a
month ago with Zalora, Verlinvest is participating in a financing round of 100 million
dollar (about 77 million euro). Other investors are Summit Partners (former
shareholders at Ogone), Swedish investment group AB Kinnevik and German retail
group Tengelmann. How much Verlinvest is exactly investing, is not known.

Diversification
outside world of beer

Verlinvest
manages about 700 million euro of assets for the InBev families de Spoelberch
and de Mévius and has been diversifying outside of the beer world for some time
now.

It focuses
mainly on three pillars: food and drinks (among others Rémy-Cointreau and
American Popchips), personal care (cosmetics Legsa) and technology (e.g.
digital mobile marketer Brandtone). The participations in Zalora and Lazada are
part of the third pillar.