Thailand’s Ardent Capital Launches aCommerce, Aims To Break E-Commerce Bottleneck

Ardent Capital is once again making movement in the region. Back in May, Ardent promised to bring the launch of Ardent Labs’ first two companies, aCommerce and WhatsNew.

ACommerce, recently launched, is poised to make a difference right away with its solution-oriented origins. The company positions itself as an e-commerce “enabler,” helping brands, brick-and-mortar stores, and e-commerce players to sell online, or sell better online. This means the company offers services from building a website, warehouse, customer service, to returning fulfillment, and of course, everything in between.

ACommerce, a result from Ardent Labs – its key internal initiative, which takes promising business ideas, tests them to determine their viability, and provides initial support for successful concepts to create independent companies – was created to provide a solution to what Ardent Capital saw as an ecommerce bottleneck in the region, specifically around the lack of a logistics infrastructure that e-commerce companies can readily plug into.

Matt Walters, Principal at Ardent Capital, told us:

Going after ecommerce infrastructure isn’t easy, but that’s precisely what makes it so attractive. You have to do the hard things to create value, things that potential competitors can’t easily replicate. When we spoke with a number of ecommerce companies in the region, one of the recurring problems raised was that there isn’t adequate ecommerce infrastructure, from shipping to on-demand call centers, to support the growth of ecommerce. We saw the problem and wanted to change it.

ACommerce’s first two clients are PetLoft and Venbi. These two are what Paul Srivorakul, the regional CEO of aCommerce refers to as “Vertical Commerce”. Both are e-commerce companies with two difference focuses – pet food and baby essential products, respectively – with the same goal of making online purchasing easy for Thais.

Although the launch is still in its infancy, Matt Walters claimed that aCommerce has already seen considerable interest from international brands and regional e-commerce players looking to penetrate the desirable Thai market.

ACommerce is currently operating in Thailand and will be opening up an office in Indonesia next quarter, with the Philippines soon to follow.

(Editing by Willis Wee)