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Thu Huong Le · · 9 min readWhy Southeast Asia should pay attention to the ex-Lazada CEO’s hot new startup
Pierre Poignant, co-founder and former CEO of Lazada, is among the highest-profile members of a growing Lazada mafia – former executives from the firm who have gone on to build rising startups in the region and elsewhere.
Only seven months after his departure from the ecommerce giant, Poignant announced that his new venture, Branded Group, had raised US$150 million to join the frenzy of startups in the US and Europe acquiring brands on Amazon Marketplace.
Co-founder and former CEO of Lazada Group Pierre Poignant, who departed from his post in June 2020. / Photo credit: Lazada
Since its inception in the second half of 2020, Branded claims that it has already amassed a portfolio of 20 best-selling and profitable brands on Amazon.
In 2020, nearly US$1 billion was committed to fund companies like Branded. Just last month, Thrasio, considered one of the pioneers in the space, raised another US$750 million in equity to continue buying third-party sellers on Amazon.
But why should Southeast Asia pay attention?
The boom of buying Amazon third-party sellers
Similar to the offline world where companies consolidate smaller shops through M&As or franchising, the digital space is experiencing the same phenomenon. For now, that world is Amazon Marketplace, which has about 2.4 million active sellers worldwide.
Source: The State of Amazon Sellers 2021 by Jungle Scout.
Companies like Branded Group, Thrasio, and dozens of others consolidate the digital-native third-party brands on Amazon in an effort to scale them. The combination of resources means better economies of scale and more bargaining power with suppliers and even Amazon eventually.
“When you think about Pierre [of Branded Group], he knows Southeast Asia incredibly well and yet he’s focused on Amazon,” says Paul Srivorakul, co-founder and group CEO of Southeast Asian ecommerce enabler aCommerce. “Third-party sellers are huge on Amazon, with quite substantial brands that can be launched globally.”
The boom of ecommerce aggregators in the US hasn’t come out of nowhere. Amazon Marketplace has been around for about 15 years, and ecommerce penetration in the US stood at more than 21% in 2020.
Leveraging the ecommerce enabler model
Stronger sellers wanted
Still a long way to go
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Pierre Poignant’s Branded Group has raised US$150 million in short order to acquire brands on Amazon. We look into what this frenzy means for Southeast Asia.
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