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.