Shopee is now the biggest e-commerce website in Southeast Asia!

Tech in Asia recently reported that Shopee has overtaken Tokopedia and Lazada to claim the e-commerce crown in Southeast Asia!

Shopee's Big Christmas Sale!

The new e-commerce king in SEA

Sea group's Shopee who came into the market three years after Lazada and six years after Tokopedia has rapidly ascended into the top of Southeast Asia's e-commerce stage with focused mobile marketing strategy and spending with heavy subsidies that hurt Alibaba funded Lazada and Softbank funded Tokopedia.

This is according to the data from app analysis firm AppAnnie where it was found that Shopee has become the top downloaded shopping app with Lazada coming in at second place.

This is supplemented by the confidential data Tech in Asia reviewed that confirms the market dominance of Shopee.

In the third quarter of 2018, Shopee reported a gross merchandising value of a whopping USD 2.7 billion that is a 153 percent increase compared to the third quarter of the previous year. The company expects this to grow even further! This is estimated to be USD 6.9 Billion to USD 7.3 Billion in total gross merchandising value which is a third of the estimated total e-commerce gross merchandising value that Google-Temasek reported.

The success is attributed to Shopee's Mobile-first approach wherein the company took advantage of the high mobile penetration rates in Southeast Asia. This was supplemented by the separate and localized version of the Shopee app in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines!

In contrast to Lazada's one app that can be set to access the different countries.

Shopee has been popular in fashion, health, and beauty where users generally spend more time browsing for products that makes the users stay for longer. This could also be attributed by the gender breakdown that states that 58 percent of Shopee shoppers are female compared to the 57 percent users of Lazada being Male.

One year after Shopee's IPO, Sea Group remains unprofitable with recorded losses of nearly USD 700 Million that comes from Shopee however there is a significant growth in Shopee's adjusted revenue in the third quarter of 2018 with a total of USD 71.2 Million which is more than 1000 percent increase compared to the third quarter of 2017! Further reduction in marketing expense from 9.7 percent in 2017 down to 5.7 in 2018 has said that even though they are losing money, Shopee is growing at an incredible pace.

What do you guys think? Do you Shop at Shopee as well?

Source: Tech in Asia