Logistics is a big part of fashion online retailer Zalora‘s business, which is why it’s so important to get it right. Unfortunately, logistics is still spotty in Southeast Asia — Singapore included — causing many e-commerce businesses have resorted to cash-on-collection as a means of delivering the goods.
While common in Philippines and Indonesia, Zalora has launched their own cash-on-collection trial in Singapore involving 19 Seven-Eleven convenience stores. This is the first time the business has tried something like this in any of its markets. Read more
The biggest news this week for Southeast Asia’s startup community would undoubtedly involve the USD 40M that luxury e-commerce company Reebonz raised from MediaCorp, Infocomm Investments, and a slew of other investors, as well as the fresh USD 100M round that Zalora, another fashion e-commerce outfit, has managed to cobble together.
Together, both developments hint at rising investment confidence in the region’s e-commerce’s prospects.
Reebonz, in particular, is a fast rising player that has expanded far beyond its humble Singapore beginnings. The luxury online store recently opened a flagship outlet in Sydney. It has launched localized sites in New Zealand, Australia, as well as South Korea, and is currently shipping to 22 markets in Asia, Europe, and North America.
For entrepreneurs, the ascendance of both companies has several possible implications: Read more
Of all of United States’ startup exports, Warby Parker is one that hasn’t really been replicated in Asia. The startup, which sells quality eyewear at a ridiculously low price point, has been a toast of the New York scene by disrupting the eyewear industry and in the process raising USD 50.3M in capital.
Warby’s innovation doesn’t lie in new-fangled technology. Instead, it break the dominance of an industry cartel that has been driving prices artificially high. By fashioning its own supply chain and designing its own glasses, it cuts out the middle men and offers eye wear at a low USD 95 a pop.
Four Eyes in the Philippines is attempting do the same. The company takes many of its cues from Warby Parker, right down to the sparse, white, and minimalist design on the website. Read more
Among tech startup circles in Singapore, Yuuzoo is not a tech company that’s particularly well-known.
But the social media and e-commerce firm, which even has a Square-like mobile point-of-sales system, recently caused a small blip on the radar by completing a reverse takeover of public-listed but declining hardware company Contel, paving the way for an entry into the Singapore Stock Exchange. The deal gives Yuuzoo majority ownership of Contel, valued at USD 582.3M.
Contel’s share price has remained at USD 0.08 since the announcement.
It isn’t stopping there. Now comes news that Yuuzoo has made another acquisition, this time a cash and share deal with IAHGames, a games distributor and operator in Singapore. Read more
Fresh from launching a new USD 10M fund to invest in Asia’s startups, global internet and e-commerce giant, Rakuten is making a new move to engage the region’s entrepreneurs. The Rakuten Startup Challenge’13 is a new competition targeted at aspiring e-commerce entrepreneurs based in Singapore who are interested to actually create online stores under hands-on mentorship from Rakuten itself. The overall individual winner will also win an all-expenses paid trip to Tokyo and the opportunity to be meet and be mentored by the Rakuten HQ team.
The entire Challenge will take place over 3 months, and the deadline for application is May 24th.
Judges are some of the big wigs here: Toru Shimada (CEO, Rakuten Asia), Shin Hasegawa (Marketing Head, Rakuten Asia), Jacob Levine (Producer, Rakuten Web Services Group) and Saemin Ahn (Managing Partner, Rakuten Ventures).
After the application, a set of participants will be selected to move on to the actual building round. In this round, participants will build an actual e-commerce store, using APIs that grab Rakuten products from their global database, and under the mentorship of a Rakuten Business Team member. The final round will see an event narrower set of participants pitch at the final Challenge.
You can sign up for the Rakuten Startup Challenge here. Submit by May 24th 2013.
Disclaimer: Rakuten is a client and partner of SGE.
Empty rooms have always been a problem for hotels, especially during off-peak seasons. Besides the lost revenue opportunities, hotel operators have to contend with fixed costs like staff wages, insurance premiums, and marketing expenses.
One way to solve this problem would be to match unfilled inventory with a market of last minute vacationers. We already know that this market exists. Hotel Tonight, a San Francisco based startup, has developed a hotel booking mobile app catering to spur-of-the-moment travelers. It appears to be doing very well, having raised a USD 23M Series C round in June last year.
Now, Hong Kong startup HotelQuickly has brought a similar concept to Asia. Launched in March this year in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia, the iOS and Android app has almost 200 hotels available for booking. It isn’t the only one getting into the act — CheckInTonight is also hoping to attract vacationers to book accommodation on its platform.
There’s no better time to capitalize on an idea like this. While Hotel Tonight is expanding outside of the United States — Europe, and not Asia, appears to be its next destination. This leaves a possibly unmet demand in Asia, as we’re certainly seeing a lot of intra-Asia travel to hotspots like Bali, Phuket, and Singapore.
HotelQuickly fits a classic ploy that has been honed to perfection by opportunistic entrepreneurs: Find an idea that is working well in the West, figure out if it’s viable in Asia, and replicate the idea there. The exit strategy is also clear: Hope that you get acquired by a competitor or a larger travel site.
While it’s challenging to recreate a Facebook or Google in parts of Asia, the hospitality sector, which is riding on Asia’s thriving reputation as a vacationer’s paradise, holds a lot of potential for replicating ideas.
HotelQuickly’s five co-founders know this game very well — two of them were from Rocket Internet after all. Christian Mischler was the former COO of FoodPanda while Raphael Cohen was the managing director of FoodPanda Vietnam.
Tomas Laboutka (CEO), Michal Juhas (CTO) and Mario Peng (CFO) round up the rest of the team, which has so far raised USD 500k from private investors in US, Europe, and Asia. The team can’t reveal names yet as they’re still in the midst of fundraising.
Tomas tells me that the idea to do this startup first emerged in July last year. From then on, the company hired a team of developers that worked remotely from Brazil, Pakistan, and Thailand. While having a team in disparate locations was challenging, the arrangement sped up execution by taking advantage of varying time zones to work around the clock — sort of like passing a baton.
Getting the development process down pat is important for a tech-oriented startup like HotelQuickly. Its mobile backend compares rates and displays the hotel rooms with the best value on the app. Payment on the app has to be as seamless as possible despite the lack of an ubiquitous payment gateway across Asia.
Then there’s the matter of developing a web platform for hoteliers to indicate the rooms they have available and the rates they’re going for. The platform also facilitates real-time or delayed money transfer from the startup to the hotel, with the company collecting a commission before passing on the rest.
With the technology is more or less in place, the startup can start devoting some effort to marketing the app. It has set other parts of Asia in its sights.
News has hit this week that Indonesia has become the new battleground for beauty box companies — a type of subscription service where customers receive a box of cosmetics samples on a monthly basis.
Singapore’s VanityTrove is believed to be the first to enter the country, followed closely behind by Lolabox, started by two former Rocket Internet employees, and BeautyTreats. Both competitors launched officially yesterday to much fanfare from the tech press.
While their entry into Indonesia is good news for consumers who have been clamoring for such services in the country, there are legitimate reasons to be skeptical about their success.
It all starts with the fact that Rocket Internet’s very own GlossyBox has avoided Indonesia and its surrounding countries like a plague. Read more
SingTel’s mWallet: Hype or substance?
There’s a lot of noise recently about the wonders of mobile money and how smartphones will bring about a dawn of the cashless society. Google Wallet has been at the forefront of this push in the United States, and here in Singapore, SingTel’s recently launched mCash is touted as a reinvention of money.
Facetious claim indeed, considering how credit cards and cash are still how people prefer to pay — even online.
But a lot of resources have been pumped into making mobile wallets work. The NFC Forum has the backing of some of the world’s top technology companies, and it’s quite possible that the technology will become ubiquitous in smartphones. Read more
In rapid fashion, Qoo10 has become a major e-commerce marketplace in Asia, processing SGD 278M (USD 224M) in its five countries last year, up from SGD 150M in 2011. However, it’s still a smidgen of the USD 175B worth of global transactions that are taking place on eBay — roughly equivalent of what China’s Taobao was processing in 2012.
The company makes between three to six percent off every transaction. To fund future expansion, it is gunning for an IPO within two years on the Nasdaq.
Singapore is Qoo10′s second largest market in terms of users and sales performance. The company’s top market is Japan, which has 1.7 million users, or twice that of Singapore. The gap is considerably less in terms of transactions, with Qoo10 processing 35,000 in Japan and 30,000 in Singapore. However, if country size is taken into consideration, then Singapore is the company’s most active market.
Qoo10 is also operating in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
The company behind the marketplace, Giosis, is a joint venture between eBay (49 percent stake) and Ku Young Bae (51 percent). Ku, who also founded GMarket, sold his South Korean operations to eBay before working on Giosis and rebranding all international GMarket sites to Qoo100.
More stats on Qoo10
Traction in Singapore:
|
|
Founding to 31 December 2010
|
2011
|
2012
|
Accumulative
(As of March 2013)
|
|
Sales (SGD)
|
6.4 million
|
34.6 million
|
91million
|
160 million
|
|
Transactions
|
770,000
|
3 million
|
6.5million
|
12 million
|
|
Members
|
88,000
|
270,000
|
430,000
|
900,000
|
|
Sellers
|
5,000
|
10,000
|
30,000
|
53,000
|
Number of employees: 450 (40 in Singapore)
Overall total sales from mobile: 20 percent
Downloads for Qoo10 app in Singapore/World: 500k/1 million
Growth rate in Singapore: 20 percent a month (fastest among all countries)
Registered Singapore users in March 2013: 900,000
New registered users a day since January 2012 in Singapore: 1,000
Profile of Qoo10 user: 27 years old on average, 75 percent female
Pageviews in Singapore: 90 million
We’ve been hearing more about online private sales in Singapore lately, with companies like Reebonz offering members-only discounts for branded fashion items and ImpulseFlyer doing the same thing for boutique and luxury hotels.
ChateauAsia is bringing the same concept to wine. The one-year-old startup, which is operating in Singapore and Hong Kong, works with French producers and importers to sell wine at discounts of between 20 percent and 50 percent.
The website’s backend tracks the tastes of its customers, and one day, the company hopes to match them with a database of French wines and their characteristics so that it can offer recommendations. Read more
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