Shopee is a Singaporean ecommerce platform that is owned by US-listed Sea Limited (NYSE: SE). Sea has had a tough year, with shares down more than 80% in the past 12 months.
This article takes a look at the challenges the company has been facing and how it has responded internally. In the past year, Indian regulators have blocked Shopee from operating in their country, Shopee closed operations in France and Spain, the company has laid off employees and Chinese internet giant Tencent has sold down its stake in the company.
To help turn the company around, Sea have been parachuting executives in from many of the more established Chinese internet companies. However, according to this article, this has caused internal conflict and added to the company’s challenges.
Sea is one of the companies competing to establish the dominant South-East Asian ‘super app’ (an app, supported by payment infrastructure, upon which other apps are built – like WeChat in China). Singapore’s Sea and Grab and Indonesia’s GoTo are some of the companies leading the charge. How Sea’s recent challenges translate to overall market share in South-East Asia will be a story to watch.
(A note, this article has been translated from the original Mandarin and the translation and formatting are not perfect).
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