The one chart about ecommerce you need to see

Dear readers,

Much ink has been spilled on how large ecommerce is in Southeast Asia, but a picture paints a thousand words:

Of course, we’d have to see if ecommerce can really triple in size by 2025. But at its current state, the industry is already supporting millions of livelihoods; (Shopee alone has millions of sellers on its platform).

Is it any wonder that everyone wants a piece of the pie, including Grab? That’s the topic of one of our stories last week, in which we debated whether Grab should own an ecommerce marketplace or stay content with being an enabler.

We also shed some light on Ninja Van’s pre-Covid-19 financial numbers, which suggested a 3x growth in revenue for the ecommerce logistics firm.

We expect it to continue that momentum from last year, given that the Covid-19 pandemic has given the industry a boost.

We also continued our coverage of the GoTo merger and saw overlaps in the services offered by Gojek and Tokopedia, suggesting a possible redundancy. This is to be expected – M&As often have casualties – even between companies as complementary as these two.

We then shifted gears and looked at other topics, such as whether Bitcoin still has a role in the brave new world of decentralized finance, and why property tech is Vietnam’s next must-watch sector.

“Oceans rise, empires fall,” sings King George III in in the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. That observation applies not just to long-standing industries like finance or property but also to the latest flash in the pan in the cryptocurrency sector.

We hope to stick around even when the oceans rise. You can keep Tech in Asia going by subscribing to our journalism.

Best regards,

Terence Lee
Editor-in-Chief