Following in the footsteps of China and the U.S., Southeast Asia is on the cusp of an e-commerce golden age. With online shopping accounting for only 1 percent of retail today, the region is slated to reach double-digit China-esque numbers within the next 4-5 years.
With a population of 600 million — twice that of the U.S. — Southeast Asia is poised to eventually become the third-largest e-commerce market in the world, second only to China and India (and ultimately surpassing the U.S.).
But enough of the macro overview. How did 2015 turn out? And what will 2016 bring to e-commerce?
Local, regional and global players stepped up their games. In particular, we saw Indonesia rise this year: MatahariMall launched with big fanfare as the nationalist answer to Rocket Internet’s Lazada; Lazada, in turn, doubled-down on Indonesia with the return of previous CEO Magnus Ekbom; for the first time, aCommerce Indonesia surpassed Thailand in order volume; and, recently, China’s Alibaba competitor JD snuck into Indonesia and surprised everyone with the launch of JD.id. This has served to add to an immense amount of pressure and competitiveness in the pure B2C space.
2015 also was the year of M&As, as other players allied together or were absorbed in order to arm themselves against the behemoths mentioned above. First, Ardent Capital-backed WhatsNew acquired lifestyle vertical site Moxy in Thailand in January.
More recently, we witnessed an encouraging e-commerce exit as beauty site Luxola was acquired by French luxury superstar LVMH. And in December, aCommerce gave a 20 percent stake to a 150-year-old Swiss retail distributor, giving it access to more than a hundred of its Western brands and physical infrastructure in the region.
Unfortunately, the year did not pass without its share of casualties due to the hyper-competition in B2C e-commerce in Southeast Asia. Fashion retailer Paraplou Group shut down in October after two years (and having raised $1.5 million) due to lack of focus and deep pockets.
In March, SingPost and Indonesia’s mobile phone retailer Trikomsel announced a mysterious e-commerce partnership — only to have reports pop-up of the telco’s dire financial situation three months later, in addition to the sudden removal of Wolfgang Baier as Group CEO of SingPost in December.
If 2014 was the year of unprecedented capital injections to build Southeast Asian e-commerce businesses, 2015 was the year we saw the early rise, fall and transmogrification of players in the fragmented landscape as they vied for a piece of the rapidly growing e-commerce pie.
In line with our annual tradition, we are giving you a sneak peek at what will be on the menu for next year. The conclusions were determined through extensive investor and executive interviews, as well as internal data and secondary sources from January 2015 to December 2015.
Because we work for a major Southeast Asian service provider, with the biggest e-commerce names in the region (such as Lazada, MatahariMall, L’Oreal and more), we are privileged to sit at the intersection of tech, logistics, retail, marketing and VC. We see where our partners are putting their money and where the investors are willing to follow.
As such, we are able to see with acuity where the growth will be. There’s no crystal ball or trusting a gut feeling here; we simply have the privilege of a bird’s-eye view that most players don’t have, and we’re providing projections here in the form of predictions.
1. Brand.com Is Poised To Be The New Black
The evolution of e-commerce commonly follows the trajectory of P2P and C2C to B2C to eventually Brand.com. The U.S. went from Craigslist and eBay to Amazon to brand sites like Nike, J.Crew and Gap. China went from Taobao to Tmall and JD to the many standalone and marketplace brand sites, like Estee Lauder, Burberry and Coach.
Today’s Southeast Asia is following a similar pattern, yet at a much faster pace due to “1 to n,” horizontal progress and the resulting leapfrogging behavior. In our region, we have P2P (OLX), C2C (Rakuten, Tokopedia, Shopee), B2C (Lazada, Zalora, MatahariMall) and Brand.com (L’Oreal, Estee Lauder) all happening at once within a very short time frame.
Even Unilever in Thailand has created an e-commerce division with revenue targets they expect to start hitting in 2016. We are seeing brands going online much earlier than one would normally expect.
It was no big surprise, then, when aCommerce recently landed a strategic investment from Asia’s biggest retail distributor, DKSH. Swiss-based DKSH owns distribution rights for some of the biggest brands in the region, such as P&G, Unilever and Johnson & Johnson.
This partnership validates the growing demand for brand e-commerce in the region, and will further expedite the process at which brands go online, whether on their own brand sites or on the many marketplaces in Southeast Asia.