Riady says boldly that his firm is not intimidated by Rocket Internet, arguably the most aggressive tech startup player in Southeast Asia.
Rocket Internet’s Lazada Indonesia – which is likely the largest business-to-consumer ecommerce site serving the archipelago today – will now have an even larger capacity than ever to rake in the sales. Lazada Group’s CEO Maximillian Bittner just announced this week that Lazada would absorb the resources and personnel of Rocket’s consumer-to-consumer site Lamido. Earlier this week, we reported that Lazada Group has received US$686 million in funding, and is currently valued at US$1.25 billion. But with deep pockets of his own and hands in many local pies, Riady doesn’t seem to care one way or another.
“I don’t know what Lazada is doing. That doesn’t drive our strategy,” says Riady. “We’ve got a larger budget than them and we’ve got a better team […] They’re focused on nine different countries. We’re focused only on Indonesia. We’ve been selling to the Indonesian consumer for the last 40 years. We know exactly what they want, what they’ll buy, and at what price points.”