ApeBusiness is a DIY Webstore Solution, Backed by Ex-Chief Scientist of Amazon

Singapore-based ApeBusiness, previously known as ApeSnap is a platform for businesses to create webstores easily and quickly.

Founded in November 2010, the platform is positioned as an easy-to-use e-commerce solution. And in Asia, such services are needed to help traditional businesses to create a customizable online presence without having to worry much about technical details.

Ding Ze-jun, co-founder of ApeBusiness, said that his platform is especially useful for restaurants who are pushing out daily deals to attract consumers. He explained:

[Restaurants can] create their own webstore and run their own ‘deals’. […] Many restaurants have their own promotion page. But it’s costly to update it frequently and even more expensive if they want online payment integration.

Hence we offer this platform, where they build their promo page for free, and even non-tech savvy restaurant owners can manage it easily, and keep content fresh.

Ze-jun also revealed that ApeBusiness currently has over 100 restaurant owners on board, and more than 20,000 registered members who are leveraging his platform. ApeBusiness charges $1 plus 2.5 percent per online sale from the merchants.

ApeBusiness webstore management interface

The start-up is funded by Dr. Andreas Weigend, a former chief scientist at Amazon. Besides ApeBusiness, Andreas also consults for established firms including Alibaba, Best Buy, Lufthansa, MySpace, Thomson Reuters, and Nokia. He also teaches at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Tsinghua/INSEAD. At least we know that ApeBusiness is in good hands.

Nonetheless, I’m sure this isn’t the first time that you’ve heard about e-commerce solutions offered in Asia. Previously, we wrote about TackThis and Dealised, which also offer similar e-commerce packages to clients.

But if you believe the Internet is here to stay (you might be crazy if you don’t) the web will certainly play a crucial part of commerce in the next few decades.

Ze-jun humbly admitted there are already big players in the field, including BigCommerce and Shopify, and remarked that one day he hopes ApeBusiness can grow to be as big as them.