Shopee: pandemic pick-up and potential future progression
The specialist outlined the share of each category within Shopee’s Thailand operations, as well as what took off during the outbreak. “The biggest winner during COVID is FMCG [fast-moving consumer goods]. If you look at Shopee’s growth, it’s driven by FMCG and home living at that time, and a little bit of electronics.”
As Thailand’s only tier-one city, Bangkok is a “well established” market that can offer same-day deliveries. Most other cities are tier two and offer delivery within a couple of days, whereas packages in remote areas of the country — mountainous areas and islands — will take five to seven to arrive. The specialist commented that there was no major difference between order values in the tier one and two cities.
When asked about the potential for Shopee to create its own logistics service, the former head explained why it would make sense: “we all see the ceiling, we say, ‘Listen, the growth is not as good as before, we need to find other levers. We need to find another adjacency to enter.’ Logistics is a really natural adjacency which we can get ourselves into.”
The discussion turned to the potential for ShopeePay to be further developed and increase customer uptake and Shopee Mall’s performance, including potential growth within Thailand.
To access all the human insights from Third Bridge Forum’s Shopee – Thailand E-commerce Market Update & Growth Strategies Interview, click here to view the full transcript.
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