This article is from the public number:Bottom Designer (ID: Bottom-upDesigner), author: Heming Qin, Yang Yan, the original title: “Vietnam, Singapore, India, Southeast Asia …… Chinese Internet giant Bureau wind up “from the title figure: Vision China.
2012There are some green cars on the streets of Singapore. They are printed with a unified logo. Investors, companies and local people all over the world have cast their eyes on this “green tide”. Then, the hot and humid sea breeze blew the “tidal” to the islands of Southeast Asia.
Southeast Asia, a region with a strong religious culture, complex terrain and huge differences in economic development, seems to have ushered in the era of mobile internet only overnight. As the global Internet economy enters a cold winter, the heat of mobile internet in Southeast Asia seems to be in the ascendant.
Temasek’s “2018 Southeast Asia E-Commerce Market Report” shows that since 2015, the annual average GMV growth rate of the e-commerce industry in Southeast Asia has been 62%. At the same time, compared with the 20% and 10% share of the retail industry in China and the United States, the share of e-commerce in Southeast Asia has just exceeded 2%.
In a few short years, a number of Internet “spokespersons” have emerged on the soils of Southeast Asia, with “LST” in the field of e-commerce (Lazada, Shopee And Tokopedia), there are “double G” giants in the field of travel (Grab and Go-Jek), and a bunch of still The payment platform for rushing to combat… Research shows that Southeast Asians spend an average of 3.6 hours a day using the Internet, and this number ranks first in the world.
The Southeast Asian region, which seems to have imperfect infrastructure, low level of informatization and relatively backward education level per capita, is experiencing a vigorous mobile Internet revolution.
Emerging fields such as travel, mobile payment, e-commerce, webcast, home-based services, etc. penetrate the Southeast Asian local market from time to time, especially Internet giants such as Grab and Go-Jek, which have maintained a leap from birth. The pace of expansion of the “style”, while pursuing the goal of “super big ecology”, divided the still growing market, and re-shaping the cognitive concepts and consumption behaviors of the majority of families with their own tools and products… …
The spring of Southeast Asia’s mobile Internet is really coming.
01 One flower is easy to open, where is the Internet spring?
There is no doubt that the Southeast Asian mobile internet market has become the most dynamic commercial position in the world, and it is also a trial of fission and integration in the local life service industry.Field inspection. Prior to this, no soil could achieve a breakthrough from “wasteland” to “hundred flowers” in just a few years.
Even in China, where the “Internet miracle” was born, it has not cultivated a group of super-large ecological players in a short period of time, and there has not been any increase in the number of users who have “opened all nights”.
So, why is this mobile internet spring in Southeast Asia exhaled?
One is the bright economic development.
In recent years, in the context of a weak global economy, Southeast Asia has enjoyed an unprecedented growth, relying on the demand potential and resource endowments of emerging markets to maintain relatively rapid growth.
According to IMF statistics and forecasts, among the major countries in Southeast Asia, India, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam have maintained GDP growth rates of between 6.6% and 7.3%, surpassing China and ranking among the top in the world, while the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. Other countries are also close behind, especially Singapore, Brunei, and Malaysia have far more per capita GDP than China.
Under this trend, the overall economic vitality and people’s quality of life are improving. With the increase of consumption power, the consumption-oriented society based on mobile internet has formed conditions, and the demand potential affected by budget is continuously released. Driven the transformation of business supply.
The second is the gradual improvement of infrastructure and the widespread penetration of smartphones.
In recent years, strong Southeast Asian economies such as Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore are accelerating the deployment of 4G signals to increase the speed of domestic communication networks, which provides cost reduction and technical support for digital commercial and mobile services.
More importantly, as global manufacturing moves to Southeast Asia, and China’s Huawei, Vivo, Oppo and other mobile phone manufacturers enter Southeast Asia, the hardware access threshold for the Internet has been greatly reduced.
It is estimated that in 2018, the overall smart phone penetration rate in Southeast Asia has reached 65%-70%, while the share of Chinese brands accounts for more than 60%. The high cost performance of domestic mobile phones is very close to the smart phone market in Southeast Asia. It also prompted Southeast Asia to skip the PC Internet phase and jump into the mobile Internet era, providing a breeding ground for the bilateral market based on mobile internet.
The third is inseparable from the “neighbor demonstration effect.”
The “capital game” of the Chinese Internet market for more than ten years can be described as southeastThe Asian Mobile Internet Battlefield has edited a set of “arms laws” that have rules to follow.
After 2000, PC Internet companies represented by “BAT” (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) set off in China. The Internet revolution, with the strategic resources accumulated in the PC era, they have strengthened their core business advantages, and the other hand has touched a wider field. The large-scale investment mergers and acquisitions have shaped the ecological structure of China Mobile Internet.
At the time, well-known capitals such as Sequoia, Morgan, and Gaochun also entered the game, making a large number of high-valued unicorn companies, the generosity of capital, and the “chain-growth” habits of Internet companies’ valuation. With similar market characteristics, it undoubtedly provides unlimited imagination to entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia.
Finally, the power of Chinese capital is especially critical.
Capital has always played a role in fueling the world. Today, half of the Southeast Asian mobile internet market is derived from capital.
Behind the growth of the first generation of Chinese Internet companies, they are standing by established professional investment institutions such as Softbank, IDG and Citibank.
Besides the growth of the first generation of Southeast Asian mobile Internet companies, apart from standing up with professional investment institutions, the far-reaching impact may happen to be Chinese Internet companies. Ma Yun once said: “Alibaba and Tencent have experienced more than ten years of hard work and life and death. Today, there are no companies and capitals in the world that can teach us to do the Chinese market.”
At present, China has stabilized “BAT+TMD”(“TMD” refers to today’s headlines, Meituan, Didi) Internet landscape, To a certain extent, it indicates that the local market has entered the stock competition, and the grafting of the successful model has become a new era strategy that the Internet giant and professional capital have already indicated, and Southeast Asia has seized the opportunity by virtue of a similar market foundation.
Looking ahead, the Southeast Asian Unicorn Company is more or less the shadow of the Chinese Internet company.
Lazada, the e-commerce giant acquired by Ali, is a big traveler, Grab, and the game giant Sea, which is invested by Tencent, is not only supported by the capital of business expansion, it is not difficult to associate, but also to win the strong associated investors. Business and strategic support.
in the middleDriven by the country’s Internet capital and professional investment institutions, the Southeast Asian mobile Internet market has spawned many mature tracks, and capital continues to cast high-valued unicorns. Of course, some projects have a lack of valuation bubble, but the strength of capital is once again verified by looking at the pace of expansion of mobile internet business and market share.
The era of mobile internet in Southeast Asia has come overnight. This vast blue ocean with more than 600 million user bases does not seem to have sufficient preparation time for all players. The melee is innate.
There will be steady state under the dispute, and the reshuffle of the Southeast Asian Internet market does happen. Both the entrepreneur and the capital behind it show a preference for “to pay tribute to BAT”.
However, diversified capital, players with different backgrounds, and heterogeneous consumers seem to make the road ahead full of variables. Integration is imperative, and competition will continue to exist in many fields for a long time.
02 Shadow “BAT”, jumping out of “BAT”: the ecological pattern of melee
“BAT shot, Internet world rule.”
Over the past five years of the development of China’s Internet, any business sector innovation can not escape the “BAT” palm.
Today, the ecological reach of the “BAT” Big Three maintains a game in different dimensions. However, the tentacles are distinct, and the three-legged oligarchy has become stable, and the competition between the stock market and the Internet has basically reached a tacit balance.
Now, the dividend period of the mobile internet era in Southeast Asia is coming, and the war-torn killings have gradually staged the merger and ecologicalization of the Chinese Internet. In all respects, the Southeast Asian market is too similar to the Chinese market, so that the market and capital have foreseen the formation of the next category of “BAT” oligarchy.
But in fact, On the fertile soil of the mobile Internet in Southeast Asia, it is impossible to cultivate and even wait for BAT.
The network effect is the core rule of the Internet era, because the resulting information cascading phenomenon will bring about the natural growth of participants, and the way in which Internet companies compete is essentially a process of establishing and strengthening the network effect. The strength of the network effect is mainly dominated by three factors:
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The underlying capabilities of the enterprise itself.
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Network structure features naturally formed by its core business, such as a centralized network of search services The point network formed by social services is generally stronger than the bilateral network formed by e-commerce and O2O services under natural conditions.
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The ability to build an ecological closed loop.
These three aspects are precisely the embodiment of the evolutionary logic of the current mobile internet in Southeast Asia and the expansion logic of the “BAT” melee period:
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The first generation of Chinese Internet companies represented by Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, relying on the PC era The establishment of the underlying capabilities and core business, strengthen the network effect, and gradually extend to the periphery to build a network of ecological closed loop.
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The Southeast Asian mobile Internet companies represented by Grab, Go-Jek and Sea are mainly concentrated in Bilateral markets are subject to weaker network effects and exhibit a distributed ecological expansion.
The evolution and competition of China’s Internet landscape is based on the establishment of the underlying capabilities. What is the underlying capability?
For Baidu, it is an indexing technology based on network information capture, search application technology and related development capabilities. For Alibaba, it is the platform system building ability and powerful algorithm technology. For Tencent, the core competence is mainly not at the technical level, but the precise understanding of the user and the ultimate ability of the product to polish.
Can be found, in the PC Internet era, no matter whichThe underlying capabilities of the road will create barriers and comparative advantages for the technical capability dimension of the enterprise. This is also because the first generation of Internet entrepreneurs face a blank industry foundation, generally subject to technology and immature markets.
The development of any field is from scratch. “Starting from the roots” has become the mission and responsibility of this generation of Internet people. In a sense, this is full of the thinking of specialized division of labor in economics.
Secondly, in the deepening process of the underlying capabilities, the capacity barriers have increased, and the core business groups linked to it have also strengthened their comparative advantages because of the support of technical capabilities, and began to establish network effects based on different paths.
3 years is a magical cycle. Around 2000, QQ took 3 years to realize the miraculous growth of registered users from 100,000 to 200 million people. Baidu spent three years, making Baidu search a search engine of choice for hundreds of millions of Internet users.
This is because the social system and the search field are inherently strong network effects. Once the traffic exceeds a certain threshold, the network’s solidity and anti-interference will naturally form.
The “rich people are richer” and “winners take advantage” at this time dominate the development of the market structure, which can explain why in the local search and social field, competitive products of the same dimension will be difficult to break through Baidu and Tencent. Market barriers, which have been confirmed on Google and Facebook abroad.
And although the e-commerce’s bilateral network is weak, Alibaba’s advantage is the first entrant advantage, as well as the excellent platform technology and payment tools in the transaction link (Alipay), also took 3 years to make Taobao’s daily life reach 9 million, becoming the largest shopping site in Asia and establishing a leading position.
BAT enjoys the Internet dividend in its respective fields while acquiring incremental users with its core business. At this time, the network effect has already begun to take effect: at this moment, Baidu, Tencent, and Ali are hard to make a difference in each other’s core areas, and their ecological boundaries are relatively clear.
The emergence and popularity of smartphones allowed the Chinese Internet to enter the second half of the game in 2012, the mobile internet era.
At this time, the “BAT” wrapped in the victory of Yu Wei has become a veritable trio of the Chinese Internet, but fragmented scenes and escalating consumer demand.It has made it difficult for the Internet that has always been “on the cloud” – the PC Internet has entered the inventory stage, and growth has fallen into a bottleneck.
At this moment, “on-line grounding, offline touch-net” fires up, and the second-generation Internet companies relying on mobile internet are on the rise. The trader behind them is “BAT”, the purpose is very clear – through Build an ecological closed loop to further strengthen existing network effects.
Inheriting the ecological architecture of the PC Internet era, “BAT” realizes the optimization and integration of the upstream and downstream of the core industry chain by investing in mergers and acquisitions, and extends the reach to a wider field to expand the existing commercial map. : Payment, takeaway, travel, internet finance, medical care… have become the competitive areas of all parties at this stage.
The boundary between the real economy and the Internet economy is no longer important. “Energy” and “transformation” have become the subject of deep thinking of Internet companies and traditional enterprises. More importantly, the network effect has also expanded with the closed loop of ecology. And continue to increase.
At the same time, there are two features that are worthy of attention during the expansion process:
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Overall, the expansion of the respective business networks and ecosystems of “BAT” is still from the bottom Starting from the ability, no matter how far the newly linked enterprises or markets are from the core business group, the ecosystem hub can use the network to share resources and cross-infiltration mechanisms. Of course, there are also lessons of over-investment.
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Ecosystem expansion is accompanied by direct competition in overlapping markets, but the moat of the ecosystem itself is widening, Overlapping market competition will not shake the Internet’s triple oligarchy that has reached a steady state.
Today, “BAT” is no longer involved in direct competition. They rely on the ecosystem closed loop to dominate the Internet market. Under this steady state, “Internet infrastructure” is becoming “BAT” foreseeable. The character is home.
However, the competitive landscape that the Southeast Asian mobile internet market is forming is very different–Because of the lack of PC Internet paving and transition, the first Internet companies in Southeast Asia are based on the mobile Internet, And when Google, Facebook as the first entrant to keep social and searchThe two positions of the engine are reserved for the entry of Southeast Asian mobile Internet entrepreneurs, and most of them only have bilateral markets.
The two most unicorns in Southeast Asia, Grab and Go-Jek, are all based on travel scenarios and extended to other areas, with the goal of opening up all aspects of the local O2O market. , in tandem with fragmented user scenarios and vendors, lack of underlying capabilities and technical support, and the resulting overall strategy.
An investor in the Southeast Asian market revealed: “Go-Jek’s strategy is what the business does.”
This is true. For the mobile Internet unicorns in Southeast Asia, the expansion of the first phase presents a multi-point outbreak, the characteristics of distributed development, the lack of adhesion between businesses, and the effect of cross-acquisition. It is only reflected in the two areas of taxi and take-away, which is in stark contrast to the early business layout of “BAT” and the hierarchical network growth model.
When the first unicorns in Southeast Asia grew up, it was not difficult to find that the battlefield of mobile internet was not scattered, the competition entered a feverish, and the market pattern turned into a delicate stage: concentration enhancement But the game is still going on, and behind this is quietly announcing that mobile Internet companies are entering a second phase of expansion – a highly overlapping ecological expansion.
On the one hand, the original business lines of various enterprises are still developing horizontally, gradually transitioning to the mode of establishing a big ecology, the birth of the super APP, and the vertical integration of the original business.
But on the other hand, the expansion of the bilateral market has led to an increase in the overlap of the business segments of different companies. In the second stage, the payment was made, the line was made, the takeaway, or the Indonesian market was made in the Malaysian market. It is inevitable that the swordsmen will meet each other. The same market may develop from the original one to the current three or four companies competing at the same time, and there is a high degree of overlap between the ecology.
The factors that led to the formation of this competitive landscape boil down to three main points:
From a rooted point of view, the network effect of the bilateral market is extremely weak. The Internet market in Southeast Asia mainly has two forces: one is the Internet giants such as Google and Facebook, and the other is the new generation of mobile Internet companies such as Grab and Go-Jek, and the split between the two parties is also positive. It is the main reason hindering the integration of the Internet in Southeast Asia.
One side, Google and Facebook occupy two areas with strong network effects, such as search and social, and they have established a firmBreakable barriers, however, the two giants did not want to make a “super APP” and penetrated into more areas along the edge.
The other side, the first generation of mobile Internet companies that grew up later, although they have penetrated into the bilateral markets such as travel and e-commerce, and used capital weapons to expand commercial maps and build ecology, the social and search field has been clamped down. Problems such as traffic growth and stickiness are more prominent, and network effects are hard to be naturally strengthened.
ATM Capital founding partner Qu Tian said: “Taxis is a bilateral network effect. As long as the subsidy is used to incite the supply side, the passengers are the ones who drive more platforms…. When is it not too late to enter this market? As long as I have enough money.”
This is like a lot of Southeast Asian consumers’ mobile phones. At the same time, several taxi software or take-out software are installed. Therefore, Grab and Go-Jek have a monopolistic market share, but the share of many fields is not exclusive. In the end, it still cannot stop the challenges of some emerging competitors.
Second, Because of the lack of underlying capabilities and technology in Southeast Asia’s mobile Internet, the source of talent and reserves are insufficient, and the overall maturity of each track and Internet market is not high, and the infrastructure is not perfect.
Therefore, the first batch of Internet companies have grown into unicorns in a short period of time, but the problem of lameness still exists. The technical barriers and the lack of moats are inseparable difficulties. This explains why Grab recently Accelerate the establishment of research and development centers worldwide.
The third, The soil of Southeast Asia Mobile Internet can be described as “Chengdu Capital, chaos also capital.” This blue ocean, which is rare in the world, has attracted a lot of capital, including not only established investment institutions such as Sequoia Capital, Softbank, but also strategic investors such as Toyota, Microsoft and Yamaha. Of course, there is also a more important batch of capital – the Chinese Internet company.
The influx of capital has made each track become congested, and the expectation of excessive investment and circulation has conveyed the expectation of irrational prosperity to the market, which has led to blind expansion and competition to some extent.
A more obvious phenomenon is that in the world of mobile internet in Southeast Asia, the power of external capital seems to strongly influence the strategic decisions of various players. For example, Ali has controlled the local leading e-commerce company Lazada, and then led twice. The CEO was replaced and the company’s various sections were further modified. This shows that the competition in Southeast Asia’s mobile Internet has already exceeded the competition among local Internet companies.
The characteristics of the bilateral market, the InternetThe lack of foundation and the spoiler of capital have jointly promoted the expansion of the mobile internet in Southeast Asia and the “BAT” later based on the ecological expansion model of the three oligarchs.
It is foreseeable that in the mobile Internet world in Southeast Asia, due to the lack of closed-loop capability, the superposition of ecosystems will continue to increase. In the short term, it is difficult for unicorn companies to get out of the “burning money” muddy. In the long run, a long head The competitive landscape of competition, not oligopoly, will continue to exist.
02 How to break through? Rooted soil
“Not every track can be quickly ripened by capital. It takes 2-3 years for Southeast Asia to actually produce a large number of unicorns.” 36. A Southeast Asian industry insider who has interviewed said.
In recent years, although unicorns such as “Double G” have appeared in Southeast Asia, the dispute over the entire mobile Internet market continues. In the bilateral market, no company can breathe.
In fact, the current track in Southeast Asia still pursues the strategy of continuing to burn money to run away. Based on the reality in Southeast Asia, the breakout of Internet companies seems to require more localized operations. With an eye.
On the one hand, super-eco is the direction of Southeast Asian mobile Internet competition, but in the ecological expansion, the refined operation and business synergy in various fields are especially critical.
A Singaporean Internet practitioner talks about his experience: “If you want to ask which company in the world knows Southeast Asia best, who else besides Grab?”
His judgment may be justified. Grab is currently the largest unicorn in Southeast Asia, and there is a set of localized management in terms of ecological expansion: although Grab’s “Super App” has scale, They are really immersed in the vertical field of the starting point of the behavior – taxi, takeaway and payment, which is the most valuable three tracks, and later the express, booking, is actually based on the field of travel. Experience and assets are above, so from the perspective of cost investment, it is still efficient.
A Grab executive has also said: “Grab’s biggest advantage is the ability to be highly localized.”
Under the precise needs of users, emphasizing the refinement of products. For example, Grab has launched more than a dozen services in the field of “travel”: motorcycles launched for crowded roads in small cities.Pet passengers, pet boxes, and launched safety seat models for families with children… This is enough to see Grab’s work on the product and understanding of the local market.
On the other hand, even though the user base of the mobile internet market in Southeast Asia is huge, the heterogeneity of demand and the complexity of the market determine that the regionalization strategy is the ultimate way to break through.
As of the first half of 2018, there are 350 million Internet users in the top six economies in Southeast Asia, but the national conditions, demographic characteristics and economic development levels of the six Southeast Asian countries are different.
So, Internet companies are facing more problems than Chinese Internet companies have experienced in the past, especially for Grab, Go-Jek, Sea and other unicorns who are seeking to build a big ecology, want to swallow every market. It is very difficult.
When Uber first entered the Southeast Asian market, he only accepted credit card payments, but the Indonesian market, which accounts for nearly half of Southeast Asia’s population, has a credit card penetration rate of less than 3%, which is obviously a problem. Therefore, Grab’s cash payment and subsequent electronic payments generated by the trend helped the company seize a lot of shares.
Traveling is just one of the windows and scenes. In the various segments of the mobile Internet in Southeast Asia, it is necessary to take into account the characteristics of different regions.
For example, the localized e-commerce platform Shopee, in the “Double Twelve” marketing campaign, chose a different event ambassador to drain: Vietnam chose to be the local star “Bui Tien Dung”, the Philippines “please” came to the local Santa Jose Chan Chan…
So, in today’s competitive landscape, if you want to take a share from the market, capital alone is not enough. You need to have a deep understanding of local policies, economic conditions and even culture. The market strategy can only be effective.
In the era of squad, capital is easy to get, and heroes are hard to make.
Now, the mobile Internet in Southeast Asia is undecided, and the wave of people in the forefront creates a structure between capital, business and users, and leads their own ecology to spread to the vast market with a population of 650 million. .
Maybe, the future track will undergo various integrations and mergers, and a number of legends will be created in the future, but it is certain that competition is the constant theme of the mobile Internet era in Southeast Asia:
In the competition, the toughness of the product is polished
In the competition, the welfare of consumers is bound to increase
In the competition, Southeast Asia can gradually repair the lame ills of the past…
Similarly, in the competition, this generation of Southeast Asian Internet entrepreneurs will understand: Southeast Asia, can not create a “BAT”, and Southeast Asia, more need to go beyond “BAT.”
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