Rocket Internet's Lazada gets $100M funding from investors

Onlne shopping site Lazada, founded by Germany-based incubator Rocket Internet, has obtained a fresh injection of US$100 million from investors. 

According to a press release by the company on Thursday, Lazada said existing investors Holtzbrink Ventures, Kinnevik, Summit Partners and Tengelmann Group had participated in the financing round.

In addition, Belgian investment company Verlinvest had joined the company as an investor, said Lazada, which has operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam..

"The interest in joining this round and its quick closing had exceeded all our expectations," Maximilian Bittner, CEO of Lazada, said in a statement.

Even though online shopping is popular in other regions of the world, the company estimates that Southeast Asians prefer to do 99 percent of their shopping off line, Bittner told Reuters he hopes to change that.

"We see the same positive trends across the region," Bittner said. "What a country like Vietnam or Indonesia may not have in GDP they make up for in enthusiasm for online."

Rocket Internet has launched multiple e-commerce sites in the past few years, including Zalando in Europe, Zando in Africa and Zalora in Southeast Asia. Earlier this month, Zalora secured US$100 million new round of funding, which it said will support efforts to scale up operations and gain an even stronger foothold in Southeast Asia.