Germany's Rocket Internet Raises $100 Million To Lazada In Asia

German ecommerce giant Rocket Internet, the owner of Zalando, has raised $100 million to grow its general merchandise site Lazada in Southeast Asia.

The fund raising is Lazada's largest to date and comes from existing investors including Holtzbrinck Ventures, Kinnevik Investment, Summit Partners and Germany's Tengelmann retail group. New investor Verlinvest from Belgium also took part.

The company hopes to push the site's growth in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philipines, Thailand and Vietnam where only about 1 per cent of shopping is done online. That compares to about 6 per cent in neighbouring China, according to Reuters.

Lazada CEO Maximilian Bittner said there was less money in the region than in some other areas but an 'enthusiasm' for online shopping that was producing positive growth trends. He said the money would be spent on logistics and improving the service from the site.

It competes with Amazon in the region which recently said it was going to ship products from the US to India and Singapore for free. Lazada claims 90 per cent of its items are dispatched the same day.

Rocket Internet has launched a number of sites in emerging markets such as Zando and Jumia in Africa and Dafiti in Brazil. Lamoda, a Russian version of Rocket's highly successful Zalando, secured $130 million in funding from investors including Summit and Tengelmann earlier this month.