A startup shares how Hong Kong is growing as a startup hub and ecommerce market

Raymond Yip, was born in Hong Kong but spent a considerable amount of his life living, studying and working in New York City. When he eventually moved back to Hong Kong to continue his career in banking, his work hours still revolved around New York time.

With spare mornings to tinker, Raymond used this valuable time to test and improve on the ecommerce ideas he saw in the West. This eventually became Shopline, a cloud based startup that he co-founded with Tony Wong and Fiona Lau. Shopline provides a quick and easy way for merchants to set up and manage their own online shop. I recently had a chance to chat with Raymond over a bowl of Pho in Hong Kong’s Central district.

Hi Raymond, Shopline’s been a great story for Hong Kong’s incredibly fast startup industry growth. Can you tell us a bit about what the startup environment was like in Hong Kong, maybe even just three or four years ago?

As early as three years ago, there were almost no coworking spaces. There was probably only The Hive and Cocoon (where Raymond set up his startup) and these spaces only featured a handful of events. The interesting thing was that the events were always packed, so I thought, “there’s definitely some interest in Hong Kong.” Cocoon hosted most of the larger events. I sometimes saw Silicon Valley investors like Dave McClure in attendance. Even then, there were a few people trying to turn Hong Kong into a place for startups.

There weren’t many prominent startups then, rather a bunch of entrepreneurs trying their best to make it. I had heard of 9Gag, but I never assumed they were from Hong Kong. I believe SnapTee was also around then. There was a “bring your own device” company called “Divide” that was later bought out by Google. Casetagram (now Casetify) was here at the time too, and now they’re quite successful.

Let’s chat Shopline. Your ambition is to eventually expand throughout Asia-Pacific. You’ve launched in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines. How do you plan to expand to other markets?

Our key differentiator is a localization features set that others cannot provide out-of-the box, without the need for external apps, plugins, language mods, or messing around with any payment systems.

Shopline has proven it can build strong partnerships in many regions with payment gateways and logistic companies to drive real value for merchants at great rates. This creates additional competitive advantages. An example of this is our integration with AllPay which allows merchants to accept credit cards and Alipay.

Another good example can be found with Shopline in Taiwan. There’s a 7-Eleven on every corner of every street in Taiwan. We’ve partnered with 7-Eleven to provide its own payment solution that works directly with their logistics network of convenience stores.

Shoppers can pick up their packages and actually pay for it at 7-Eleven stores. We’ve integrated this and AllPay for Taiwanese merchants as those are the major ways merchants can conduct e-commerce transactions. Even with $100 million dollar competitors, we’re unique because our competitors haven’t been able to do this yet. It’s about understanding and being able to build and foster important local relationships.

Our focus for the future is to provide the same type of integrated service for merchants all over Southeast Asia, in places like Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and other top markets in the region. We’ll continue to leverage our strong technical capabilities and partnerships to make this happen.