Local Lazada gets first crack at training
The strong growth of e-commerce has enabled Thailand to become the first country where Alibaba Group is joining hands with Lazada to hold training courses for online sellers on the latter’s platform.
The move comes after Lazada introduced a new strategy of zero commissions for sellers on July 15 to attract local merchants as it competes with Singapore’s Shopee, which began offering zero commission fees two years ago.
Lazada is also competing with JD Central, which had a soft launch here and plans a commercial launch in August.
Lewis Lew, head of global training for Taobao University under Alibaba Group, said Thailand is the first country where Alibaba is offering online training course to sellers on the Lazada platform through a collaboration with the Lazada team.
Lazada has had great results in Thailand and Alibaba is committed to the country, Mr Lew said.
“We hope to train some 3,000 Lazada merchants in Thailand out of several tens of thousands,” he said.
Taobao University’s online training course for sellers on the Taobao (consumerto-consumer) and Tmall (business-toconsumer) platforms, both under Alibaba Business School, awards an accredited bachelor’s degree for online merchants.
Mr Lew said that since Alibaba signed a memorandum of understanding with the Thai government last November, the company has trained about 3,000 Thai SMEs in the food, cosmetics and travel sectors, which have the most popular Thai offerings for Chinese customers.
Mr Lew said online buyers born after 1985 are the majority of buyers in China.
Alibaba Group has about 520 million active users, indicating strong market potential for Thai merchants.
Mr Lew said that by 2020 the demand for import products in China will increase to US$8 trillion, with customers who prefer import products accounting for 25% of the Chinese population.
There will be some 731 million internet users in China, he said, and online penetration there will increase by 33%, the most in the world.
“We have changed the business model by setting up tiers of merchants, and zero commission fee is available for all existing and new merchants,” said Aimone Ripa di Meana, chief operating officer of Lazada Group.
Lazada operates in six Southeast Asian countries with a total of 300,000 merchants.
The group has soft-launched its LazMall, a premium mall offering quality, genuine branded products.
Merchants in this mall have to pay some commission fees, as their products will be more visible to shoppers.
Separately, a source said Lazada Thailand has replaced chief executive Alessandro Piscini with Chinese executive James Tong from Alibaba.
Mr Piscini will now oversee Indonesian operations.