We published the first version of this article 3 years ago, in 2018. Since then, we have been updating it yearly, following the latest developments in the numbers and ranks of the key players in the marketplace landscape in South East Asia. Our latest update is right at the end of 2021, summarizing the data from 2021 and looking ahead into 2022. We also have redesigned the whole structure of this list, adding various metrics, including GMV estimates.
The South East Asian is a region of previously less-developed nations that are now experiencing explosive growth. That means the eCommerce story here over the past few years has been one of upheaval and rapidly rising stars. In this article we break down the top ten most visited eCommerce marketplace websites in South East Asia, looking at their visits numbers and, where possible, financial results.
1. Shopee
Active in: IN, VN, PH, TH, MY, SG
HQ: Singapore
Average Monthly visits: 470 mln
Estimated yearly GMV: 60 bln USD
Employees: 20.000
Website: shopee.com
Singapore-based Shopee is a chain of eCommerce websites, each dedicated to their own market — with 15 major sites for Asian, European, American markets. Although, so far, apart from South East Asia countries, only in Brazil (where it launched in 2019) Shopee managed to gain significant traction. Anyway, we’ll be looking at the South East Asia branch of this shopping empire.
Shoppe’s combined GMV for all markets are projected to reach 60 bln USD in 2021, staggering 80% growth from the last year.
Since its launch just seven years ago, Shopee went from promising new kid on the block to the constant second-place finisher behind Lazada. But in the final years of the decade, Shopee stole the crown from its biggest rival — and to this day continues to be the eCommerce leader in the region.
Shopee provides sellers with its own supply and logistics solutions, and language-specific customer service. Another unique feature that allows Shopee to differentiate itself: an escrow service called “Shopee Guarantee” that provides payment security for both sellers and buyers.
Shopee’s parent company Sea (formerly Garena), apart from eCommerce, is a leader in digital financial services and digital entertainment across South East Asia. Sea owns the highest grossing mobile game in the region, “Free Fire”.
Sea boasts backing from (and is partially owned by) China’s Tencent. Tencent has engaged in a sort of “proxy war” with mainland rival Alibaba through its support of Shopee, as Alibaba has injected money into the platform’s regional rival Lazada.
Shopee’s eCommerce marketplace is first and foremost mobile-focused. Asked which factors contributed to their growth in the SEA Region, Agatha Soh, Head of Regional Marketing for Shopee in South East Asia said “a mobile-first approach [that] helps attract the online consumers who are bypassing desktops, and going straight from offline shopping to mobile shopping.”
2. Lazada
Active in: PH, TH, ID, VN, MY
HQ: Singapore
Average Monthly visits: 140 mln
Estimated yearly GMV: 40 bln USD
Employees: 10.000
Website: www.lazada.com
Another multinational South East Asia giant eCommerce marketplace is Lazada. For much of the past decade, Lazada reigned supreme in South East Asian eCommerce. Recently beaten to the top spot by Tencent-backed Shopee, Lazada still represents a formidable presence in the region.
Launched in 2012, Lazada operates in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The platform boasts more than 155,000 local and international sellers, as well as 3,000 brands serving the 560 million consumers in the region.
With over 300 million SKUs available, Lazada offers a wide range of products. Categories range from consumer electronics to household goods, toys, fashion, sports equipment to groceries. They focus on customer experience, offering multiple payment methods — including Cash on Delivery (COD) — and returns through their own first and last mile delivery arm supported by more than 100 logistics partners.
Following Alibaba investment in 2016, Lazada’s platform structure quickly shifted to resemble Ali’s ecosystem in mainland China — complete with Lazmall to complement TMall, and a cross-border suite as the local equivalent to Tmall Global.
Parent company AliBaba Group is not particularly transparent about the performance of Lazada and lumps it with AliBaba’s other international businesses. It seems most likely, however, that Lazada’s GMV would be in the vicinity of 40 billion USD in 2021.
3. Tokopedia
Active in: ID
HQ: Jakarta, ID
Average Monthly visits: 150 mln
Estimated yearly GMV: 14 bln USD
Employees: 5.000
Website: www.tokopedia.com
Local eCommerce platform Tokopedia has achieved significant dominance in the large Indonesian market. It was founded in 2011 by two Indonesian entrepreneurs from a small Indonesian city with the aim of redressing imbalances throughout Indonesia and democratizing commerce. The name for their startup came from Indonesian “Toko”, meaning “Shop” and “encyclopedia”. Over the years, Tokopedia has gone from strength to strength, attracting investment from multiple global VCs and more recently by China’s Alibaba and Japan’s SoftBank.
Apart from being the staple of the Indonesian eCommerce market, Tokopedia is famous for its boysterous marketing campaigns, that include celebrations with international and local pop stars. Among guest celebrities are such prominent bands as SM*SH and BTS.
Tokopedia’s yearly GMV is estimated at 14-15 bln USD. Tokopedia and Shopee are now two main players and fierce competitors in the Indonesian eCommerce market, each occupying about 30-35% of it.
4. Bukalapak
Active in: ID
HQ: Jakarta, ID
Average Monthly visits: 27 mln
Estimated yearly GMV: 8 bln USD
Employees: 2.000
Website: www.bukalapak.com
Behind Tokopedia and Shopee, in third place in Indonesia (and in tight competition with Lazada), is another local unicorn: Bukalapak. Founded a decade ago by three college friends, the platform found early success hopping on a trend of foldable bicycles back in 2010.
Bukalapak differs slightly from Tokopedia’s standard marketplace model. The platform partners with numerous small brick & mortar stores, facilitating online-to-offline commerce.
2021 was a huge year for Bukalapak. Following rapid growth in 2020, they underwent an IPO in August 2021, raising 1.5 bln USD, making it the largest ever in Indonesia.
5. Blibli
Active in: ID
HQ: Jakarta, ID
Average Monthly visits: 16 mln
Employees: 2.000
Website: www.blibli.com
Yet Another Indonesian platform, Blibli has a reputation for highlighting local Indonesian brands on its marketplace. It also notably runs all its logistics efforts in-house to ensure two-day delivery. In 2019, Blibli made a special effort to stand out from the rest of the pack. It became Indonesia’s first eCommerce site to integrate video streaming. Blibli Play offers on-demand sports streaming as well as integrations with the eCommerce platform.
Blibli is one of the Indonesian “soonicorns”: a startup that is predicted to surpass 1 billion in the near future.
6. Carousell
Active in: SG, PH, MY, ID
HQ: Singapore
Average Monthly visits: 21 mln
Employees: 500
Website: carousell.sg
In 2012 three Singaporean students returned home from their internship in Silicon Valley full of inspiration and excitement. They put their experience to good use, creating a platform called “Carousell” that would solve problems with technology. Main problem those young men had happened to be unused electronic equipment that they wanted to sell. Long story short, Carousell is now the second biggest marketplace in Singapore and a prominent player in South East Asia, working in half a dozen of countries.
While starting as a classified ads site, it has now evolved into a marketplace for both C2C and B2C. Estimated value of the company is expected to surpass 1 billion in the near future.
7. Tiki
Active in: VN
HQ: Ho Chi Minh City, VN
Average Monthly visits: 18 mln
Employees: 4.000
Website: www.tiki.vn
Vietnam is the second largest eCommerce market in South East Asia, right after Indonesia (to be fair, there is a stiff competition for the second place). eCommerce is on the verge of enormous growth: the market is expected to triple its current volume in 5-7 years.
While top players here are international giants Shopee and Lazada, local companies are starting to catch up. One of such runners-up is Tiki.
Tiki’s origins are immediately reminiscent of global giant Amazon’s. The Vietnamese platform began as a humble online bookseller in just the same way, with the name “Tiki” being an abbreviation of “search and save” in Vietnamese.
Following strong early success, it grew to its current multi-product marketplace. Tiki these days is known for courting a younger demographic. Previously, Alibaba became Tiki’s largest shareholder following significant investment – more evidence of Alibaba’s keen interest in SEA eCommerce.
Tiki managed to secure more than 200 million USD in investment by the end of 2021 — to continue developing its eCommerce business and diversify in other niches. Tiki expects 40-50% revenue growth in a few years.
There have been rumors circulating for the last two years that Tiki will merge with another Vietnamese eCommerce marketplace, Sendo. Yet, there still is no confirmation if this is really happening or not.
8. Sendo
Active in: VN
HQ: Ho Chi Minh City, VN
Average Monthly visits: 5 mln
Employees: 500
Website: www.sendo.vn
Sendo is a successful homegrown Vietnamese eCommerce platform that caters to a provincial consumer base. The platform spent most of 2019 battling it out with local rivals The Gioi Di Dong and Tiki. This followed Sendo’s purchasing and acquiring of its rival 123 Mua. As we mentioned previously, in early 2020, rumors emerged of a possible merger between Sendo and Tiki, but this deal has since been put off due to the pandemic.
9. Zalora
Active in: ID, PH, MY, SG
HQ: Singapore
Average Monthly visits: 7 mln
Employees: 3.000
Website: zalora.com
Zalora is a leading online fashion retailer and marketplace in South East Asia. Since starting in 2012, Zalora has grown to become the largest and fastest growing fashion-based eCommerce platform in South East Asia, expanding into Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Philippines. It expands beyond South East Asia too: to Australia and New Zealand. The platform offers over 500 top international and local brands and designers, and has over 7 million monthly users from across the region.
Zalora is a part of Global Fashion Group, which unites fashion eCommerce enterprises in emerging markets.
10. Qoo10
Active in: SG
HQ: Singapore
Average Monthly visits: 5 mln
Employees: 1.000
Website: www.qoo10.com
Qoo10 (formerly known as GMarket) is an online marketplace based in Singapore. The platform currently operates seven localized online marketplaces across five different countries in South East Asia.
It used to have a strong presence in Japan, but sold its Japanese business to eBay a few years ago. Now Qoo10 focuses on the Singaporean market, where it generates 80-90% of its revenue.
Honorable mention: Amazon
Monthly visitors in SEA: 25 mln
While Amazon.com does not have a dedicated website set up in any of the South East Asia countries, it is still available and, to an extent, popular. South East Asia accounts for about 1% of traffic for amazon.com, and given how huge Amazon is, even 1% is a significant amount: about 25 million visits.
Users often have to rely on third-party delivery services to actually get the goods, and the speed and reliability of such deliveries can hardly compare with that of local marketplaces. Because of that, Amazon probably should not be considered a proper competitor of platforms like Lazada or Shopee. Still, Amazon often sells items that are not available to buy on local platforms, so there is a distinct demand for what Amazon has to offer.
We hope you have found our list of must-know South East Asia marketplaces useful. You also might be interested in our South East Asia eCommerce Outlook 2020, which gives a broad overview of some of South East Asia’s most exciting markets.
About the data used in this article. For monthly visits, we used SimilarWeb data. For GMV numbers and other information, we used various sources, including analytical articles, investment and financial websites, companies’ reports and TMO Group’s own estimates.
