Under the impetus of Internet technology, the Southeast Asian market with a large population and rapid economic development is gestating a group of fast-growing unicorn enterprises.
Editor’s note, this article is from WeChat public account “Southeast Asia goes to sea” (ID: gh_5a947c76ae26).
In recent years, under the impetus of Internet technology, the Southeast Asian market with a large population and rapid economic development is gestating a group of fast-growing unicorn enterprises.
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Southeast Asia is the fastest growing Internet user in the world, with 380 million Internet users. Among them, the total number of Internet users in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand exceeded 350 million, an increase of 90 million from 2015.
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In the first half of 2018, Southeast Asian Internet companies raised a record $9 billion in funds. In less than four years, Southeast Asian Internet companies have raised a total of $24 billion, including nine. Internet giants have attracted 67% of the region’s funding, reaching $16 billion.
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According to public data, these unicorn companies are not limited to Southeast Asia, and Gojek is the most active in acquisitions. Since 2016, Gojek has taken 12 startups to the forefront. .
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At present, in Southeast Asia, traffic travel and e-commerce have become popular and the competition is fierce. Head companies have a large advantage in terms of capital, market and users.
Unicorn comes from the US venture capital community, and Aileen Lee, the famous American CowboyVenture investor, classified the private and public market valuations of more than $1 billion in 2013, and called these companies For “unicorn”. In recent years, under the impetus of Internet technology, the Southeast Asian market with a large population and rapid economic development is gestating a group of fast-growing unicorn enterprises.
Southeast Asian market size
The Southeast Asia (SEA) region has 11 countries, including Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines and East Timor, covering an area of approximately 4.57 million square kilometers. According to the latest UN data, the population of Southeast Asia is about 670 million, equivalent to 8.59% of the world’s total population. The population density is 153 people per square kilometer, and 49.8% of the population.It is the urban population, and the median age in Southeast Asia is 28.8 years.
At present, Southeast Asia is the fastest growing Internet user in the world, with 380 million Internet users. Among them, the total number of Internet users in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand exceeded 350 million, an increase of 90 million from 2015. According to the latest report released by Google, the Southeast Asian Internet economy achieved a total value of $72 billion in goods (GMV) through online travel, e-commerce, online media and transportation in 2018, an increase of 37 compared with the same period last year. %, exceeding the 32% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2015 to 2018, is expected to exceed $240 billion by 2025.
Unicorns in the Southeast Asian market
In the first half of 2018, Southeast Asian Internet companies raised a record $9 billion in funds. In less than four years, Southeast Asian Internet companies have raised a total of $24 billion, including nine. Internet giants have attracted 67% of the region’s funding, reaching $16 billion. According to the valuation requirements of the unicorn company, there are eight companies in Southeast Asia that meet the standards. In addition to a housing construction company, Revolution Precrafted, the other seven companies are among the above-mentioned Internet giants, including: Bukalapak, Gojek, Grab, Lazada. , Traveloka, Tokopedia, and VNG.
As of July 2019, Grab raised about $9.1 billion and became the largest unicorn company in Southeast Asia, successfully squeezing into less than 20 companies with a market capitalization of more than $10 billion. Lazada, Gojek and Tokopedia have also successfully raised $4.2 billion, $3.1 billion, and $2.4 billion, respectively. At present, the total valuation of these eight unicorn companies has reached 42.25 billion US dollars.yuan.
In terms of industry, travel and e-commerce are hot areas in Southeast Asia.
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Grab and Gojek’s two unicorn companies have an absolute advantage in Southeast Asian transportation;
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Lazada, Tokopedia, and Bukalapak all started on e-commerce platforms;
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Traveloka is an online travel platform company;
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VNG’s main business is gaming and social networking;
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Revolution Precrafted is a home construction company.
In terms of national distribution, Indonesian and Singaporean unicorn companies have an advantage, including 4 in Indonesia and 2 in Singapore. Vietnam and the Philippines each have a unicorn company. Singapore is the center of Southeast Asia and the headquarters of most startups, while Indonesia’s population accounts for nearly half of Southeast Asia, and the market has huge room for development.
Let’s take a closer look at the eight unicorn companies in Southeast Asia based on the valuation sequence:
Grab is a Singapore taxi service provider, established in 2012. At present, the total financing amount is about 9.1 billion US dollars. The investors mainly include powerful companies such as Softbank, Microsoft, Didi, and Toyota. Many Chinese capitals such as Ping An Capital, Gaochun Capital, Jiyuan Capital, Xiangfeng Investment, and Qunar are also involved in their financing activities. As of July 2019, its valuation has reached $14 billion.
In addition, Grab’s current business has expanded to include payment, take-out, express delivery, insurance, etc., but its president Ma Ming said that Grab’s core business is still called car and payment.
By the end of 2018, Grab had operations in eight ASEAN countries including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar, covering 235 cities.
Another travel giant in Southeast Asia is Indonesian company Gojek, which was founded in 2010. Behind it are the support of giant capital such as Google, Tencent and Temasek. In addition, some Chinese capitals including Jingdong, Meituan Review, and Huaping Investment have also participated in Gojek’s financing activities. Currently, Gojek has disclosed a financing amount of $3.1 billion and a valuation of $9.5 billion.
At present, Gojek has developed a number of derivative businesses, including transportation, food delivery, mobile payment, logistics and merchant services, with its core business.
Gojek’s biggest rival in Southeast Asia is Grab. At the beginning of 2019, in addition to the Indonesian market, Gojek has fully opened its business in Singapore, and the two sides competed fiercely in various fields such as travel, food delivery and payment.
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Competition in mobile payments
Grab and Gojek both want to emulate China’s Alipay and WeChat to build multi-application scenarios based on payments. GrabPay operates in six countries in Southeast Asia, and its business scope will become broader after establishing a new partnership with MasterCard. Gojek’s Go-Pay payment system is currently operating primarily in Indonesia.
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Competition in food and daily grocery distribution
Gojek quickly became one of the most popular feature options when Gojek launched its app in 2015. In addition, Gojek also provides customers with daily grocery distribution through Go-Mart. In July 2018, Grab launched a new open platform, GrabFresh, which provides department store delivery services, commissioned from Jakarta, Indonesia, and will be launched in other Southeast Asia.
Tokopedia is an Indonesian C2C e-commerce platform, established in 2009. It is one of the two home appliance platforms invested by Alibaba in Southeast Asia and can be called “Taobao” in Indonesia. At present, the amount of financing it has disclosed is US$2.4 billion and its valuation is US$7.3 billion.
According to the Indonesian e-commerce aggregation platform iPrice released in the fourth quarter of 2018, the e-commerce platform rankings show that Tokopedia’s APP ranks first with 168 million monthly visits, and downloads in the iOS system. Second, download in AndroidThe quantity is ranked third. It is worth mentioning that during the Indonesian Ramadan in 2019, due to the surge in online shopping demand, the APP’s GMV (total merchandise transaction) reached a record $1.3 billion.
At present, Tokopedia has gradually developed a number of businesses based on the C2C e-commerce platform business, in which e-commerce, financial services and payments account for a large proportion, and this business is still expanding. In the area of payments, Tokopedia has partnered with OVO, the main payment platform invested by Indonesia’s Lippo Group. Tokopedia not only provides users with mobile phone recharge, bill payment, nearby restaurant coupons, etc., but also sells airplanes, train tickets, tickets for tourist attractions and other events to users like Taobao in China, and continues to erode the original Market share of online travel platforms such as Traveloka. In 2019, Tokopedia also launched a new social marketing feature for sellers, Tokopedia ByMe.
Traveloka is an online travel platform in Indonesia. It was established in 2012 and currently covers Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. It not only cooperates with more than 50 airlines worldwide, but also with Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Nearly 100,000 hotels in South Korea, Japan and Australia have reached a cooperation. As of April 2019, Traveloka has downloaded more than 30 million apps.
It is worth noting that in 2017, three Chinese capitals such as Gaochun Capital, Jingdong Science and Sequoia Capital (China) also participated in Traveloka’s B-roundCapital. Currently, Traveloka has a valuation of $4.1 billion.
Lazada is one of the largest online shopping sites in Southeast Asia. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Singapore, its target markets include Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Lazada is Alibaba’s important strategic layout in Southeast Asia. In April 2016, Alibaba invested US$1 billion in holding Lazada, and in 2017 and 2018, it added another US$1 billion and US$2 billion to Lazada.
Lazada’s core business is divided into local and cross-border sectors, including the Marketplace platform model, Lazmall B2C model and LazGlobal cross-border.
In mid-August 2018, Lazada also launched the Global Collection, a selection of matching goods warehouses, which has developed thousands of brand partners and more than 100 logistics partners, and has a new payment service with the shopping platform. Lazada Pay.
VNG was established in 2004 and is currently the only unicorn entrepreneur in Vietnam.The company specializes in providing online games and e-commerce services to the local market. VNG has received investments from Tencent, IDG Ventures Vietnam and CyberAgent Capital and is currently valued at approximately $2 billion.
VNG now has four core business segments, including games, platforms, payments and cloud services, and a rich product ecosystem that meets the needs of more than 100 million customers in Vietnam, including Zing, Zalo and ZaloPay. Excellent product.
Revolution Precrafted is a famous prefabricated building startup in the Philippines established in 2015. In October 2017, Revolution Precrafted completed the B round of financing, which was led by Singapore venture capital firm K2. K2’s portfolio also includes many other unicorn companies such as Spotify and Palantir.
Revolution Precrafted Homepage
REVOLUTION is a series of limited edition, prefabricated houses, including homes and pavilions. this projectCombining more than 80 outstanding architects, artists and designers from around the world, it can take anywhere from 60 to 90 days, depending on location and terrain.
Bukalapak is an Indonesian local e-commerce platform company established in 2011. Its products cover home appliances, digital products, beauty care, men’s and women’s apparel and many other categories. In January 2019, Bukalapak completed a $50 million Series D round of financing, currently valued at $1 billion.
Bukalapak’s business covers a wide range of areas, from airline tickets, train ticket sales to financial products, investment services and more. In addition to the online market, Bukalapak also tested Mitra Bukalapak, a partner program that sells waterlines, to increase the range of products available for small kiosks or individual sellers; at the same time, Bukalapak has been increasing its financial products. The series has been able to provide various financial products such as mutual funds and gold trading.
The acquisition of unicorn companies
For these unicorn companies in Southeast Asia, acquiring a startup at a reasonable price is a good choice for rapidly expanding their business ecosystem. According to public data, these unicorn companies are not limited to Southeast Asia, and Gojek is the most active in terms of acquisitions. Since 2016, Gojek has taken over 12 startups.
postscript
Based on factors such as economic upswing, demographic dividend, and geographical advantages, Southeast Asia has become one of the most important markets for global capital. It is worth noting that most of the funds in the Southeast Asian investment and financing market have flowed to ten head companies, which are the eight listed unicorn companies and two listed companies, Razer and SeaGroup.
Relying on abundant capital and huge population market, some unicorn companies in Southeast Asia are advancing to the “super unicorn”. In the first half of 2019, Gojek and Grab absorbed 3.15 billion US dollars in Southeast Asia’s total financing of 5.13 billion US dollars, accounting for 61.40%, they will likely develop into a complex of domestic US Mission + Didi + Alipay.
At present, in Southeast Asia, traffic travel and e-commerce have become popular and the competition is fierce. Head companies have a large advantage in terms of capital, market and users. Therefore, startups that want to enter the Southeast Asian market should try to avoid direct competition with the business of these enterprises. They should start from other segments (such as media content, business services, etc.) and it is easier to cut into the market.
编 | 云晞@出海
