Weekly News Wrap: Tata buys majority stake in BigBasket; Jessica Liu departs as Lazada president

And SEA’s e-commerce market could grow $280b with more women entrepreneurs.

From Reuters:

Tata Sons has acquired a majority stake in online grocery seller BigBasket, putting the Indian conglomerate in a direct race with e-commerce players Amazon, Walmart's, Flipkart, and Reliance Industries.

The stake was bought by Tata Digital Limited, a unit of Tata Sons. Tata declined to give further details on the deal, whilst BigBasket did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

India's antitrust body had in March approved the acquisition of up to a 64.3% stake in BigBasket by Tata Digital. Media reports have said the deal is worth about $1.31b (INR95b), and will involve buying out Chinese giant Alibaba's stake.

Read more here.

From Bloomberg:

Jessica Liu, president of Lazada Group, is leaving the Southeast Asian online shopping unit of Alibaba Group. She is departing Lazada to spend more time with her family, the company said.

Liu has been a key member of Lazada’s leadership team and also served as head of LazMall, the fast-growing marketplace for international and local brands within the Lazada platform. Earlier this year, she took on an additional role of chief executive officer of Thailand, becoming the company’s first female country head.

Lazada has gone through frequent management shuffles since it was acquired by Alibaba.

Read more here.

From CNBC:

Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market could grow by more than $280b by 2030 if major online shopping marketplaces do more to encourage and enable women entrepreneurs, a new report from the International Finance Corporation found.

The “anonymity” of e-commerce has reduced many of the barriers to entry traditionally faced by women and afforded them the opportunity to thrive in new sectors, Amy Luinstra, the IFC’s gender program manager for East Asia and Pacific, told CNBC.

Still, many of the inequalities faced by women in the traditional retail space “bleed into the online world,” she said, such as securing access to funding.

Luinstra called on big e-commerce players to do more to support women vendors. That includes extending financing for women, providing training, and encouraging them to participate in higher value sectors like electronics, she said.