What are Shopee’s rivals upset over?

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When our founder Willis first began looking into making Tech in Asia carbon neutral, it seemed an unachievable ideal – we’re an online news site, for crying out loud. But yesterday, we marked our third year of carbon neutrality, driven by the sheer cheesiness (and power) of our wanting to leave behind a better planet for our loved ones. Here’s how we did it.

On a wider scale, our thirst for internet connectivity is taking its toll on the environment – even as ecommerce giants like Shopee continue to grow.

Today we look at:

• Why Shopee rivals are crying foul over its practices
• The pay-per-email model: Pure genius or bonkers?
• Other newsy highlights such as Gojek-backer Astra’s new investments, and Razer’s uber green fund

PREMIUM SUMMARY

It’s a tug of war

It isn’t news that most of the ecommerce industry’s biggest players have opt-in “priority” agreements with merchants, giving them benefits like discounts on service fees in exchange for allocating more – sometimes all – of their resources to the platform. But some believe that Sea-owned Shopee has crossed the line by taking this a step further.

• In two WhatsApp conversations shared with Tech in Asia, Shopee explicitly requested that merchants shut down their existing stores on a competing platform to qualify for a campaign around the shopping festival 9/9.. While many arrangements are limited to within a campaign period, industry insiders say some can last up to a year. Small sellers are particularly vulnerable to them, according to industry sources.
• Shopee’s current contracts with its sellers across all of its markets no longer don’t include a penalty clause, from our understanding. However, many merchants still choose to enter such agreements to access benefits such as shipping rebates, boosts in traffic, and inclusion in campaigns or flash sales.
• Sellers are smart and some bypass such restrictions by operating multiple stores on different platforms, often using a different store name that’s either linked to a different bank account or registered under different identification details.

Read more: Shopee’s rivals cry foul over its aggressive tactics to win sellers

STARTUP SPOTLIGHT

Hello, email inbox paywall

We’ve all received cold emails and direct messages from people we don’t know – and one company that’s looking to change that is Radr, a startup that was born during the peak of the pandemic.

Dive into the potential of Hong Kong’s startup scene