Table of Contents:
- What is Shopee?
- Shopee India Growth
- Shopee Growth Strategy
- Benefits to Shopee Sellers
- Shopee Growing Traffic
- Shopee Controversy 2022
What is Shopee?
Shopee is a Singapore based eCommerce marketplace owned by Sea Group, a global consumer internet company started by Forrest Li in 2015. Shopee first opened for business in Singapore in 2015, and it has since grown to Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Brazil.
Shopee India Growth
Shopee enter Indian market in mid 2021. Since then it has witnessed tremendous growth starting from 0 visitors on its site in September 2021 to hitting 5 million visitors in Jan 2022.
Within weeks of its soft launch, Shopee registered 100,000 daily orders in India and surpassed one million app downloads on the Google Play Store.
The huge growth of Shopee is due to its marketing strategy. There are huge eCommerce giants in India like Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho, Snapdeal, etc and giving a competition to these marketplace was a tough task. So, Shopee took the Jio route to capture the market and make its presence.
Shopee crushed the competition with its low pricing strategy by offering huge discounts and free shipping to customers. Customers were able to order items for as low as Rs 2 for a Rs 100 product in the first few months and that too with free shipping.
This create a hype among customers and Shopee became the talk of the market. 80% of the customers on Shopee belongs to tier 3 and tier 2 cities.
Shopee Growth Strategy
“When it comes to entering new areas, Shopee’s overarching strategy has remained quite consistent. To acquire a footing at the low end of the e-commerce sector, they would often start with long-tail categories and small-ticket items, such as electronics accessories,” an expert explains. The goal is to build a user base before enrolling local sellers, with the goal of eventually transitioning them to higher-end goods and becoming a mainstream platform.
Benefits to Shopee Sellers
Shopee not only benefited the buyers but also the sellers who join their platform as a supplier. Shopee offers huge benefits to sellers by not charging any kind of fee. You will be amazed to know there is no commission, no fixed fee, no collection fee, no shipping fee or any kind of fee for that matter. This is indeed a golden opportunity for all sellers to join Shopee and take advantage of the benefits.
Its certainly true that these benefits are not going to be continued for long time as the company is still operating under loss.
Shopee Growing Traffic
You can see the website traffic below from Zero in September 2021 to 9.2 Million in February 2022.
The curve shows a growth of 100% month on month which means the traffic is doubling each month.
Since its launch Shopee has witnessed a huge order volume on daily basis which also means that returns and cancellation has also increased manifolds.
Because it’s a new platform many customers are facing many issue in contacting Shoppe customer support, canceling orders, getting refunds, replacement and much more.
Many fraud activities are also taking place, like missing items in package, damaged items received in package, wrong item received and many more. We cannot say who is responsible for such activities as everyone is taking advantage of the loophole in the system.
Shopee Controversy 2022
In India, Shopee’s journey hasn’t been as easy as it has been in other countries. The Confederation of All India Traders, an Indian trade association, requested the Finance Minister to put a ban on the e-commerce firm a month after it went live in the country.
The key source of concern, according to experts, is that this Singaporean firm has “Chinese roots.” Forrest Li, who is the founder of Sea Group, the parent firm of Shopee, is a native of Singapore who was born in Tianjin, China. Tencent is also a significant shareholder with 18.7% holding of the company’s stock. These facts support the claim that Shopee’s operations in India violate the 2020 FDI Press Note, which establishes foreign direct investment laws.
The letter specifies that any entity or investment from a country that shares a land border with India must invest solely through government-defined channels.
Shopee is also accused of using a “predatory pricing approach” that might unfairly eliminate competitors.
