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This past Tuesday, news broke about Alibaba Group, alongside other partners, leading a US$400 million investment in the retail arm of Vietnamese consumer giant Masan Group. Masan Group owns VinCommerce, which operates the country’s popular supermarket chain Vinmart.
The deal will allow Alibaba-backed Lazada to compete in the online grocery scene and significantly increase its online-to-offline retail capabilities.
According to the Financial Times, this is one of Alibaba’s largest investments in Southeast Asia after it acquired Lazada back in 2018.
With Chinese regulators pressing hard at home, it’s reported that the firm has to look elsewhere for growth.
This is not the first time that Alibaba has bet on Vietnam. Reuters reported in 2019 that its fintech affiliate Ant Financial had acquired significant stakes in local e-wallet eMonkey.
Capturing consumer retail can further accelerate the Chinese giant’s fintech ambitions in the country.
As we’ve shown in our Vietnamese fintech landscape map this week, the door is still wide open as there’s no clear winner yet in a market of nearly 100 million people. That potential is surely hard to ignore.
— Thu Huong Le, journalist at Tech in Asia
TOP STORIES THIS WEEK
1️. The key players in Vietnam’s fintech battleground
Who can tap into Vietnam’s 70% unbanked population? We map out the country’s leading fintech contenders and predict what might lie ahead.
2️. Sea Group more than doubles quarterly revenue to $1.8b
The jump was driven by an increase in the company’s active user base in its digital entertainment segment.
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