Rocket Internet launches ecommerce store in Myanmar

Rocket Internet, the German startup dynamo that focuses on emerging markets, has already been operating in Myanmar for just over two years with several classifieds sites. But now the company says it’s ready to do something new and very challenging – launch an actual ecommerce site in Myanmar.

But is Myanmar itself ready for ecommerce? The country only opened up a few years ago. While foreign brands have rushed in – from Coca Cola to Huawei, L’Oreal to Telenor – to get an early start, tech companies are finding that a lack of infrastructure is making for a slow beginning to their frontier ambitions. With few people online (1.2 percent of the 53 million population, said the World Bank in 2013) and smartphones in the hands of a small percentage of the population, the prospects for online shopping look tough.

“We believe Myanmar will shortly be ready for ecommerce,” says Koen Thijssen, co-CEO of Asia Pacific Internet Group (APACIG), the Rocket spin-off set up in April to focus on the continent.

Thijssen cites Rocket’s ecommerce entry into Pakistan as an example of getting in at the ground floor, way before other companies would even begin to consider the market as a viable option.

He’s now preparing to launch Shop.com.mm in Myanmar, an ecommerce marketplace that has just come online quietly but which the firm isn’t yet marketing. It’s a version of the Daraz.pk estore that it rolled out before in Pakistan. Aside from Myanmar, it will soon launch in Bangladesh as well.

“It’s the Amazon of the frontier markets in Asia,” says Thijssen, describing the site.

New shoppers

Thijssen, who hails from the Netherlands, feels that the time is right for this kind of move into Myanmar. “We have to be there now because it’s growing so rapidly,” he explains.

Shop.com.mm will focus on “price leadership,” says Thijssen. That and the broader availability of items compared to offline shops should help to bring in Burmese eshoppers – and perhaps even drive the growth in ecommerce in the nation.

Nay Min Thu, a Burmese tech entrepreneur who founded the iMyanmar Group, says that ecommerce in Myanmar is going to boom. “It is inevitable. Thousands of people are getting online for the first time every day. Internet usage will grow by leaps and bounds.”

Although Nay Min Thu’s sites, such as iMyanmarHouse, are rivals of Rocket Internet’s classifieds sites in the country, he welcomes the tech giant’s arrival in the fledgling ecommerce scene. “Rocket Internet’s presence in Myanmar is actually good for the local tech ecosystem. It kind of puts pressure on local startups to do a lot of improvements – in terms of both technical and business-related improvements.” He adds that “competing with an international player […] compels local startups to work harder and move faster.”