Southeast Asia-targeted e-commerce platform Lazada is Swipe (2017)laying off around 2,000 employees, or 20% of its headcount in the first downsizing since Alibaba’s acquisition in 2016, according to a Tuesday report by LatePost. The redundancy affects not only entry-level staff but also senior roles that rank above P8 and is aimed at bringing down costs, as six Lazada-covered countries have their own operations and support teams while headquarters were also involved in the same work previously. Lazada is still in a loss-making status, order growth has slowed over the past year, and the company also faces tightened competition from regional rival Shopee. The latest overhaul is set to shift focus towards centralized decision-making at the headquarters, which will use data-driven approaches to allocate subsidies and gain user growth for each country, a Lazada source told LatePost. [LatePost, in Chinese]
