ENSOGO - A MEETING PLACE FOR BUYERS AND SELLERS

 

 

Inspired to create ecosystem e-commerce in Thailand after his graduation overseas, Tom Srivorakul, CEO and founder of Ensogo, a social commerce company, entered the online business nine years ago. He joined hands with his brother to set up the first digital agency in Thailand named New Media. 

He later expanded the business by setting up Ensogo as a social commerce business model, via www.ensogo.com, a couple of years ago, which acted as a media channel to match demand between customers and business through the online network. 

Initially, Ensogo employed only five employees and the firm expanded its business based in the Philippines and Indonesia within one month. It now has about 415 employees in three countries. 

“E-commerce business will use social tools such as Facebook to create a relationship with the consumer, which becomes social commerce in order to share and invite friends to participate. The demand of customers do not change as customers want to save money and testimonial new products and services to support their lifestyle and daily life,” said Tom.

With success in daily business and promotion campaigns, the firm now has more than 400,000 Facebook fan pages. It also gets feedback from customers via social media to adopt and manage the business so as to support the demands of customers such as product needs and trends. 

Tom said 70 per cent of customers valued the fact that the firm can create value addition such as discount sale. Meanwhile, business partners or businesses need customers to deliver their products and services to. In this scenario, Ensogo becomes a media channel that matches the demand between customers and businesses. 

The firm utilises new technology such as real-time location to adopt its business to support customer behaviour trend, customer demand as well as the demand of businesses that want to invite customers to their business in real-time. The firm also creates personalised promotions and provides special offers or special discounts to customers such as restaurants and spas. Moreover, it will also provide real-time recommendation to customers so that they are able to ask for suggestions before they make a decision to purchase the products and services. It plans to provide business to support a niche market in the next step. 

“We are a media channel, which will create the medium to support demand both among customers and businesses. We will adopt ourselves to utilise technology to create new services to help businesses reach customers,” said the CEO. 

The firm now has 300-400 online deal promotions per month. It has about 2,600 business partners, creating a market share of about 90 per cent of online daily deals from more than 30 competitors such as Groupon, DealDiDi and DealThailand. The firm expects to have more than 3,000 business partners this year. 

He said that Ensogo, by the end of this year, expects business growth of 120 per cent with the number of members rising from 400,000 in 2011 to 1.2 million at present. It expects the numbers to hit 2 million by the end of this year. About 80 per cent of 1.2 million customers purchase discounted products and services via credit card while 8 per cent pay via mobile transaction. It also provides a debit card, priced at Bt300-Bt500 to its members. 

Meanwhile, its Facebook fan page now has 1 million fans, rising from 400,000 last year. It expects that it will have about 8 million fans by the end of this year. Meanwhile, the e-commerce business in Thailand is valued at around Bt40 billion with market growth of 20-30 per cent year on year.