For Singapore’s Shopee, being ‘late’ to the e-commerce game has helped its rise in Southeast Asia

• Since it was established in 2015, Shopee has become the most visited e-commerce site in the Southeast Asia region
• By launching its platform as an app first, the brand was able to tap the region’s high mobile penetration rate, chief commercial officer Zhou Junjie says

For an e-commerce platform under four years old, Shopee has done pretty well for itself.
Since it was established in 2015, the Singaporean e-commerce site has become the most visited across Southeast Asia, according to a recent iPrice report which also found that Shopee’s mobile app ranked at the top of its category in terms of downloads and average monthly active users in the region.
One of the secrets to its success? Being “late” to the industry, according to chief commercial officer Zhou Junjie.
“Back in early 2015, we were looking at e-commerce as an industry and while there were players who had been there, we saw that there was a lot of [potential] growth and many areas that weren’t being addressed well by existing players,” he said in an interview with the Post.
At the time, most existing e-commerce players were focused on websites as their main platform. Shopee took a different strategy early on by launching as an app first to tap Southeast Asia’s high mobile penetration rate.
“That’s one of the advantages of being late [to the industry], because you can see what’s out there, what the trends are and see what you can do differently or better,” said Zhou.
The Singaporean e-commerce platform is one of several in the region – including Alibaba’s Lazada as well as Indonesia’s Tokopedia – that are eyeing the fast-growing, billion-dollar e-commerce market in Southeast Asia boosted by increasing adoption of digital payments among the 100 million internet users in the region. (Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.)
Shopee is operated by Singapore-based technology firm SEA, a company that first came to prominence in the Southeast Asian technology landscape by publishing, operating and creating PC and mobile games under the Garena brand before branching out into e-commerce.
The platform’s bet on a mobile-first approach has paid off: more than 90 per cent of its transactions are on the app, according to Zhou.
Another key strategy Shopee has used to conquer local markets, Zhou said, is localising and customising the app to each specific market.