Ardent’s Moxy enters Indonesia, believes women are key to its ecommerce dominance

The Indonesian female beauty product industry is worth more than US$2.2 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. When it comes to buying things online in the archipelago, women account for the largest piece of the pie. More than 40 million women are now online in Indonesia and on average, they control 65 percent of all purchasing decisions, according to a survey by Female Daily Network.

Ardent Capital-backed WhatsNew Group is based in Thailand, and started out as an ecommerce firm with only two categories: pets and babies. Today, it acts as the holding company for five more ecommerce sites. As an umbrella firm, WhatsNew Group has expanded rapidly in Thailand. Last January, it acquired one of Thailand’s top online lifestyle stores, Moxy, for an undisclosed amount. Moxy joined the Ardent bullpen along with pet portal Petloft, baby estore Venbi, health and beauty ecommerce site Sanoga, and cosmetics firm Lafema.

Earlier today, Ardent announced that it has officially brought the WhatsNew ecommerce family to Indonesia. However, instead of WhatsNew being the parent portal, Moxy will be the single representative brand. The whole thing is a little confusing. Basically, all this means is that users can visit Moxy’s Indonesian domain and buy stuff related to beauty, fashion, babies, lifestyle, gadgets, and muslimwear. However, the primary difference between Moxy Indonesia and WhatsNew Thailand is that Indonesia’s Moxy doesn’t redirect visitors to any other sites in Ardent’s lineup. Instead, it’s all just labelled as Moxy.

Ardent named Andrew Senduk as CEO of Moxy Indonesia. In the past, Senduk worked for Deloitte and ING Wholesale Banking in the Netherlands, then served as country managing director of Lion&Lion digital agency in Jakarta. Ardent has also named former Cdiscount Thailand executive Jérémy Fichet as Moxy Group’s new CEO.

See: Shopline nets $1.2M in funding from Ardent Capital and 500 Startups, sets sights on Southeast Asia

Did someone say aCommerce?

Thanks to Ardent Capital’s CEO Adrian Vanzyl, Tech in Asia knew this was coming since last month. According to Vanzyl, Moxy Indonesia “has more than 50 staff, thousands of SKUs, and is growing rapidly.” The company is funded fully by Ardent, and Vanzyl says it put several million dollars into the company so far.

Moxy is naturally targeting Indonesia as a strategic play. According to eMarketer, the local business-to-consumer ecommerce market is worth around US$2.6 billion. Ardent says the Indonesian consumer landscape as a whole represents a US$2.4 trillion opportunity. “We realized that the single largest market in Southeast Asia would be Indonesia by the end of 2015,” adds Vanzyl.

“One of the biggest challenges that any ecommerce player has to face in Indonesia is securing local logistics expertise,” says Senduk. “But our strategic partnership with aCommerce gives us a local advantage.”

In Jakarta, it seems one can’t walk out the front door without stumbling into ecommerce service provider aCommerce. The firm is the primary service provider for names like Lippo’s MatahariMall and retail giant Mitra Adiperkasa’s MAPeMall. Now, it will have its hands even fuller with Moxy Indonesia. The size and scale of aCommerce’s partnerships also raises serious questions about the firm’s capacity, and if it can realistically provide end-to-end service for most of the big players in Indonesia, save Lazada.