5 Southeast Asian Ecommerce Players Setting Examples for the Rest

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Southeast Asia is growing by leaps and bounds, in recent years. Have you visited Thailand or Singapore recently? I’m sure that you will be blown away by the progress of the countries in South-east Asia, especially in the last decade.

The spurt in ecommerce is affecting several markets in the region. No wonder, Google and Temasek have predicted through their recent study that online consumer spending is expected to breach a staggering quarter of a trillion dollars by 2023! That growth will be stupendous by any yardstick, surely.

Huge investments of billions of U.S. dollars has enabled reliable telecom services, cheap smartphones notwithstanding, with millions of new internet users in recent years.

Interestingly, the mobile internet users in the region are comparatively the most active in the world too. Recent figures though paint another picture. Online retail accounts account for just 2.5 percent of the entire market and about 1% percent of total retail sales in the region. This factor augurs well for e-commerce market prospects and the incessant growth of digital economy in Southeast Asia.

Smart E-commerce tactics by Top Ecommerce Players in ASEAN Countries

E-commerce companies are investing today to achieve their objectives with long term solutions.

Here are five companies that have employed innovative tactics to boost sales in the region:

  1. Shopee, an online retailer based in Singapore, leveraged the mobile app for its shopping venture since 2015. The company’s shopping app now boasts of the highest number of active users for every month, in the region. The company jumped on the bandwagonidentifying mobile shopping apps to be in trend in time, defeating its competitors to become the most visited ecommerce platform in ASEAN countries. It had gained a staggering 200 million visitors by 2019, and become the most downloaded shopping mobile app in Malaysia!
  2. Tokopedia and Bukalapakhave made their presence felt in Indonesia garnering a huge market share in the country. Tokopedia in particular uses its own integrated logistics and fulfilment centre that has enabled the marketplace to reach 98% of the country. The marketplace also offers 42 digital products as on date, that ensures proper fintech and payment options for buyers through digital wallets, merchant loans, insurance products, and more. They have often been the most visited sites since 2019, since Indonesia is the most populous country in the ASEAN region.
  3. Lazada, that has strong connections with the Chinese giant, Alibaba group, also identified its mobile app to be the primary shopping platform for its users. The company now has strong monthly active users in the six ASEAN countries, ruling roost in the domain of fashion, electronics, beauty, and F&B.
  4. Love, Bonito, has employed an efficient omnichannel strategy to gain market traction in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia while adhering to fashion with western-centric design. The founder Rachel Lim acknowledges its fashion trends related to different body shapes and skin tones thus maintaining a strong physical connection with its buyers, adding to the brand’s dynamic and broad appeal in the market.
  5. Zalora, based in Singapore is a worthy fashion retailer in the region, having staved off attention and popularity of global retail giants like Amazon and Alibaba consistently. Zalora, is also owned by a German company, but it moved faster and earlier than other players, lending better access and assistance to local fashion outlets in Indonesia, Philippines, and other countries. The brand seeks to be consistently responsive to consumer needs and is always employing tactics to make its deliveries fast through seamless supply chains.

The digital economy in Southeast Asia is banking on ecommerce trends to diverge considerably from the global trends as top players are keen to localise their retail operations to capture the market in the big six countries of region that include Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Ecommerce expansion is getting a new wind particularly in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Expect bigger things here…

To know more about the ecommerce growth prospects,  catch industry experts from the ASEAN region at the Future Internet Summit.

Event by Exito Media Concepts