Letter to readers: Shopee’s tactics to acquire sellers comes under fire

Dear readers,

It would seem that ecommerce in Southeast Asia has solidified somewhat.

Shopee leads Southeast Asia’s ecommerce scene by active users. Lazada remains firmly entrenched as the regional number two player, and Tokopedia’s foothold in Indonesia is still strong.

But behind the scenes, there’s plenty of jockeying for power. At an internal meeting, a rival accused Shopee of practices that might be deemed anti-competitive. That said, no action has been taken against Sea Group’s ecommerce arm.

Critics say that Shopee had crossed a line by locking small sellers into exclusivity agreements with a carrot-and-stick approach. However, these are opt-in instead of compulsory arrangements, and Shopee no longer enforces a penalty clause for sellers who breach terms of the agreement.

You can read our top premium story last week for the lowdown on what happened.

Photo credit: Shopee

As tech giants jostle for pole position, their workers – merchants, drivers, roadside stall owners, and contractors – serve as pawns in this grand game.

Yes, these platforms provide workers with income, but the power imbalance is real. As a result, discontent has seemingly grown, fueling protests and social media outrage that’s getting louder each day.

For example, we published a story on how Ruangguru’s outsourced workers and how they were allegedly paid below minimum wage. While the Indonesian edtech startup claims that it was a misunderstanding all along, this raises the question of whether the workers’ expectations could have been better managed.

Even though tech platforms are trying to raise the living standards of workers, the reality is that these companies face pressure on many fronts to keep costs low.

Nowhere is this more visible than in Indonesia, where ecommerce logistics giants are bracing for a price war. There’s a constant push to hold delivery fees at the minimum, and the recent boatload of funding into the space is expected to drive prices down even further.

As such, taking care of rank-and-file workers, which form the majority of a logistics firm’s workforce, will be a constant challenge.

“The biggest fallacy here is that people can be commoditized,” said Lai Changwen in a previous interview with Tech in Asia. Lai is the CEO of logistics firm Ninja Van, which employs tens of thousands of delivery people.