Rocket Internet confirms Lamido will merge with Lazada

Earlier today, news broke that Rocket Internet will soon close the doors to its consumer-to-consumer marketplace Lamido, which is currently active in several Southeast Asian countries. The sources in the article were unnamed, but Tech in Asia has confirmed with Lazada Group CEO Maximilian Bittner that Lamido will merge with Rocket’s larger ecommerce entity Lazada. He says:

Lamido was a Lazada venture originally set up to offer a consumer marketplace platform separated from Lazada. Over the last year, third party sales have become the dominant driver of Lazada’s sales explosion with the share of third party sales growing from less than 10 percent, at the time of Lamido’s launch, to 75 percent today. With the rapid growth of both Lazada and Lamido marketplaces, we have experienced an increasing overlap between the customer and seller bases across the two platforms.

Given the many synergies between the Lazada and Lamido brands, it is thus a natural step to combine their offerings. The integration will not only accelerate the expansion of our assortment, but also give our buyers and sellers a better experience. We believe the future is in a controlled marketplace like Lazada’s as consumers expect an effortless and reliable shopping experience.

Bittner added the merger is occurring in all markets that Lamido and Lazada serve together, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. In addition, all Lamido employees will be integrated into Lazada.

In countries like Indonesia, where ecommerce is gaining momentum, Lamido was a bona fide competitor with companies like Tokopedia and BukaLapak, while Lazada is arguably one of the more dominant business-to-consumer ecommerce sites in all of Southeast Asia.