With the launch of Prime Now instant delivery in Singapore from Amazon, a question arises: can the retail giant really give Alibaba a run for its money in Asia?
The business of HonestBee was built from little to nothing just a few years ago, however, now it has expanded into eight markets into Asia pacific region.
Joel Sng, the company’s founder has stated that the business can be turned in for some profit, however, to see the business expand and flourish further, he wants to invest even more. He is excited by the growth potential, given that less than 2% of people in South East Asia currently shop online. And those that do are mostly young.
“The only way for us is up”, he says.
To say that these expectations and the statement itself is unrealistic would not be a fair statement, given the fact that data, coming in from Google and Singapore based sovereign wealth fund Temasek showed that the e-commerce sector in the region is expected to skyrocket in the next few years, from $55bn (£42bn) in 2015 to $88bn in 2025. And these are just conservative estimates.
All this act relating to e-commerce has only motivated Amazon to launch the prime now service, which it did, last month.
It has set up a 100,000 sq ft (9,290 sq m) facility in Singapore – its largest warehouse in an urban center – and is offering the two-hour delivery service for everything; whether you order something as little as eggs, to something as big as an air conditioner.
Singapore might also be considered a safe option to invest in, mainly due to the fact that customers in Singapore are relatively comfortable in paying online, however, the same could not be said for other countries. Hence, when talking about other countries, this means they have to rely on a network of agents who collect cash on delivery – a much less efficient system that is also vulnerable to fraud.
But for now, Singapore seems to be a safe investment, even though the market would not be that a huge one – serving around 5 million people.
