SHOPEE MALAYSIA EYES STRONGER PRESENCE
Mobile marketplace plans to first build an integrated and credible platform for buyers, sellers
SHOPEE Malaysia, the leading mobile-first marketplace platform in Southeast Asia, is unconcerned that it is operating at a loss, even though it is hosting some 150,000 sellers on its platform.
Its regional managing director Ian Ho said Shopee Malaysia was playing the long game by building a stronger online presence and establishing itself before monetising itself.
Speaking to NST Business recently, Ho said this business strategy was working for Shopee but would most likely not work for others.
“Our intention is to first build an integrated and credible platform for both our sellers and our customers and once we have established ourselves, we will then look at monetising,” he said, without divulging the timeline.
Ho said the only way Shopee Malaysia was able to do this was because it had the backing of its Singapore-based parent company Sea Ltd, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) last month.
Through the listing, Sea, formerly known as Garena, became the 12th Asian company to list on the NYSE.
Chinese tech-giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, the owner of WeChat, has a 35 per cent stake in Sea, thus becoming its single biggest shareholder.
Malaysia’s strategic investment fund, Khazanah Nasional Bhd, is also an investor.
“Khazanah’s experience in building leading businesses will help strengthen our leadership position across our digital content, e-commerce, and payment platforms as well as advance our global mission of ‘connecting the dots,’” said Sea’s founder and chief executive officer Forrest Li.
Besides Malaysia, Shopee is also present in six other markets, namely Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore.
“We have a collective annualised gross merchandise value of about US$3 billion (RM12.7 billion). Malaysia’s contribution is not that significant yet, but we are taking the necessary steps to ensure that it will increase,” he said.
Ho added that Shopee was also deploying Big Data analytics for its merchants, which it was deploying in phases.
Data provided by the analytics can later be used by the merchants for more targeted selling.
Touching on Malaysians’ spending habits, Ho said most had the tendency of buying fast-moving consumer goods, baby products and health and beauty items online.
“We have seen an increase of sale in these categories and we expect the trend to continue going forward. We are also looking at increasing the number of sellers in these categories so the buyers will have a wider selection to choose from,” he said.
Another step that Shopee has put in is in the creation of the virtual Shopee Mall, which features more than 100,000 authentic products from the brand owners themselves.