Lazada co-founder enters AI arena with Salesforce-like product

Magnus Ekbom, a co-founder of ecommerce platform Lazada, has launched a software services company that focuses on AI.

Ekbom started SEAI with Ashwath Ramesh, who was executive vice president for Southeast Asia at Lazada. They both left Lazada in 2022 and established their Singapore-based startup in June 2024.

Magnus Ekbom, co-founder of SEAI speaking at Tech in Asia Conference  held in Jakarta last week. / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

In an interview with Tech in Asia at the TIA Conference 2024 in Jakarta last week, Ekbom said his experience of developing AI at Lazada led directly to the formation of his latest venture. “SEAI is a new company, but we’ve been at this for the last 15 years,” he noted.

Ekbom dislikes having to label the business, but he calls SEAI a software services company.

“What we build is very similar to the product suite that Salesforce offers, barring Slack,” he explained, adding that SEAI focuses on building machine learning models that are customized for enterprise clients.

He describes the development of machine learning at SEAI as “just applying the same technology – the same thinking – to a different use case and a different target customer.”

Lazada taps machine learning for data mining, business analysis, and market research as well as product recommendations to customers based on their searches and purchases.

Ekbom co-founded Lazada in 2012 with Maximilian Bittner. Chinese tech giant Alibaba acquired Lazada in 2016 for US$1 billion.

See also: From layoffs to profit: Is Lazada finally ready for an IPO?

During his stint at Lazada, Ekbom served as the group CEO of Indonesia and Malaysia and oversaw operations in Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand. He was also chief strategy officer and interim CEO.

Photo credit: Lazada

He stressed that SEAI is “not building large models that have general applications,” pointing out how the AI industry’s focus on models is misdirected.