Maximilian Bittner studied at University College London, worked as a Morgan Stanley analyst and a McKinsey consultant, and then took an MBA at Northwestern.
In 2011 he secured Rocket Internet backing and moved to Singapore. Lazada launched in 2012 and added third-party sellers in 2013. It raised over $685 million from investors including Tesco and Temasek before Alibaba arrived.
Alibaba took control in April 2016 and raised its stake to 83% in 2017 with a $1 billion investment. Bittner left as CEO in March 2018, and LazMall launched that year.
Lazada has had four CEO changes since: Lucy Peng and Pierre Poignant in 2018, Chun Li in 2020 and James Dong in 2022. In 2023 it was placed under Alibaba's international digital commerce unit.