Shopee tapping e-commerce explosion in Southeast Asia mobile e-commerce marketplace says 

SHOPEE, a leading mobile e-commerce marketplace, has committed to continuing to invest in Thailand and elsewhere in the region due to the region’s being the fastest growing e-commerce market. 
In Southeast Asia, each country is different. That is the beauty of the region, but it is also the challenge. But with more than a half billion people, the region is worth the effort.
One of the reasons Southeast Asia is challenging is the fact each country is different, with their own languages, logistically set ups, payment methods, culture, and user preferences. That is why Shopee has a local office in each market – because localisation is very important, said Terence Pang, the company’s chief operating officer.
In this competitive landscape, Pang said, everyone [e-commerce players] want to come to Southeast Asia as it is a very interesting market, but not everyone will be successful because firms need to have unique local knowledge to bring into the market.
The penetration of online e-commerce in Southeast Asia compared to the retail market is between 1-3 per cent, while in mature market like the US, China, Japan, Germany, and European countries, e-commerce markets enjoy double digital penetration. 
There is a lot of room for Shopee to grow, Pang said, adding the company needs to invest more in its ecosystem including payments and logistics as well as educating users and top talent on e-commerce. 
“The number of smartphone users in this region is rising continuously. We recognise the huge opportunity for online marketplaces to create differentiated solutions that suit the ever-changing needs of the new generation of users. Shopee is committed to creating a platform that serves the needs of both buyers and sellers,” Pang said.
Taiwan is the country with the most advanced e-commerce market. To lift their e-commerce standards, Southeast Asian need more initiatives to drive the segment.
Each country has different e-commerce characteristic. For example, in the Philippines the challenge is logistics since it has more than 1,000 islands. It is impossible to identify one logistic provider that can provide 100 per cent coverage.
Pang said providing coverage to be able to access all the markets in the Philippines is the challenge. 
In Southeast Asia, Thailand is ideal for e-commerce in terms of the size of the market, its population, the penetration of the Internet especially the mobile Internet, and the affluence of the people. The challenge in Thailand is more education because as Thailand is growing so fast, users might not fully understand the concept of e-commerce.
“Thailand is the very good market. The market is quite ready for e-commerce. Our strategy is to educate Thais in order to bring them onto the platform, to grow, and expand the market and to increase the user base,” Pang said.
Shopee is a consumer to consumer platform and a business to consumer platform. In Southeast Asia, there is blurring line between C2C and B2C because technology enables everyone to be able to sell and buy online. 
“E-commerce is a very local business. It is not a business you can win globally ... Now, the focus is on the countries we are in, understand, and know consumer behaviour. We believe in the run long e-commerce is localised business, not a global business,” said Pang.
Shopee is the largest and fastest growing mobile e-commerce market in Southeast Asia. In one year, it grew to US$1.5 billion (Bt53 billion) in gross merchant value. It has 250,000 orders per day, and 20,000 orders per day in Thailand. It has more than three million users in Thailand, and 20 million in the region.
"We are set to be a technology platform provider, providing a platform for users to buy and to sell. We have a really strong focus on enablement and instruction. We want everyone to be able to buy and sell on Shopee, from small individuals to the bigger sellers,” Pang said.
He explained that Shopee was developed to be an easy platform to sell on, with items listed to sell in 30 seconds.
He said it also has a clean and simple user interface app with payment and logistics integration that makes it very simple to buy and sell.
The company does not charge licence fees and there are no commissions. It provides money subsidies for shipping.
“We know shipping is concerned with pinpointing online shoppers, so we provide free shipping. All these things we provide allows everyone to enjoy online shopping,” Pang said.
He added that those measures meant Shoppe was successful in getting an increasing number of users to buy items, with most users making their first online purchase on Shopee.
There are also a lo of individual sellers, he said.
“We help more young entrepreneurs and startups come on to the platform, to be successful in creating businesses on the platform in Thailand and SEA [Southeast Asia],” he said. 
He added that e-commerce has continued to change since first started in the region.
“When Shopee started in December 2015, we identify two key trends that would be changing in SEA. One is the shift in consumer’s behaviour from PC to mobile and social commerce growing. That is why Shopee came to the market – to capture these two key trends since day one,” he said.
He said that over the past five years Instagram and Facebook had become bigger e-commerce players in Thailand but they did not have proper logistics and payment channels, so Shopee saw that as an opportunity.
“In the past, social media was for social media, e-commerce was for e-commerce. Now, Shopee integrates them as a service. Shopee’s challenge is how to teach consumers to better sell online,” Pang said.