Alibaba's Lazada braces for brawl with Amazon in South-east Asia

Singapore

ALIBABA Group Holding Ltd and Amazon.com Inc are about to clash in South-east Asia. And Lazada Group SA, which Alibaba bought this year for US$1 billion, will be right at the heart of that conflict.

South-east Asia's largest e-commerce site is rolling out a series of initiatives in anticipation of the US giant's entry next year. It's expanding its delivery network within the region and beyond, via partners in China and South Korea. It's on the prowl for investments and acquisitions to shore up its supply chain. And it intends to delve deeper into online groceries in 2017, a notoriously difficult market it got into by buying RedMart.

That's because Lazada's home turf is shaping up to be the next battleground for Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma and Amazon chief executive officer Jeff Bezos. While still lacking the transport and payments infrastructure crucial to the widespread adoption of e-commerce, the region has become the world's fastest-growing Internet arena, with a combined populace of 620 million p…