2023 Cross-Border Overseas Forum

On September 17, the 20th China-ASEAN Expo "Cross-border Overseas Forum 2023" organized by 36Krypton concluded successfully in Nanning. Dozens of executives from various fields of overseas brands, investment institutions, and service providers gathered here to discuss and share their latest insights and judgments on cross-border links such as cost channels, logistics supply chain, and digital payment.

Logistics is a must for e-commerce to go overseas. And in Southeast Asia, the construction of logistics network has different challenges from the domestic. For example, Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries have many islands and a complex logistics system; cash payment is still the mainstream in many countries, and the proportion of COD (cash on delivery) mode is much higher than that in China. Therefore, Southeast Asian e-commerce players must choose reliable logistics partners. As the head of Southeast Asia’s logistics delivery service provider, Ninja Van’s General Manager of China Business, Jian Xue, observed that although the Southeast Asian e-commerce market is relatively complex, but the main best-selling categories are concentrated in electronic products, fashion, home, personal care and other categories, and among them, perhaps 90% of the sellers are from China.

 Mr. Xue Jian, Commercial General Manager of Nergy Logistics China

 The following is the transcript of the guest speech, edited by 36 Krypton:

 Hello friends in Nanning, today I will mainly share with you from the perspective of three aspects related to the Southeast Asian market: first, the basic status quo of Southeast Asian e-commerce and insight into the future prospects; second, the delivery status of Southeast Asian logistics to share; and third, how Ninja Van Energy Logistics is committed to empowering cross-border sellers on the road to the sea.

First of all, we can look at a set of data, including an overview of the Southeast Asian e-commerce market and the basic information of each country, you can see: the Philippines, Indonesia has the largest population, the largest market, Singapore, although the population is smaller, but the consumption capacity is stronger, including the price of the customer and the Internet penetration rate are at the forefront of the first Thailand’s online shopping rate. The best-selling categories in each country are not very different, basically each country is the electronics, fashion, home, personal care is the most popular. From our perspective, we found that almost 90% of the sellers are China past, these products are basically from China past.

Let’s look at some more key numbers, the e-commerce market in Southeast Asia has grown by 70 million consumers in the three years of the epidemic, the population of Southeast Asia is roughly 700 million, and the consumer base grew by 10% during the epidemic, and it is expected that the total number of consumers in Southeast Asia will reach 380 million in 2026, which is about 60% of the region’s population, and personally I see that this number will surely continue to expand, and it is expected that by 2025, the Southeast Asian e-commerce market will reach $211 billion. As you can see from the chart on the right, Southeast Asia is still the market with the most growth, and Southeast Asia is also number one in terms of global e-commerce spending in 2022, followed only by Latin America. Southeast Asia occupies five of the top ten countries in terms of global e-commerce growth, with the Philippines in first place, Indonesia in second place, Vietnam in fifth place, and Malay and Thailand in seventh and eighth place respectively.

So what are the reasons for the booming e-commerce market in Southeast Asia? I think first of all, through the age to analyze, overall Southeast Asia median age is very young, the United States and China is about 38, 39 years old, Thailand, Singapore is basically the same as it, but several other countries, like the Philippines, Malay, Vietnam, the population of the consumer power and consumption of the age group is relatively low, young people are more, easy to develop new consumption habits; Secondly, Southeast Asia ranked first in the world in terms of the use rate of mobile devices. Their dependence on social networks is very large; finally, according to data analysis, the middle class in the region is gradually increasing, we go to Southeast Asia to travel or communicate with friends in Southeast Asia, it is also obvious that the rich people in Southeast Asia are particularly rich.

In addition, from the macro level, a lot of policy and investment market action can also be seen more attention in the shift to Southeast Asia, first of all, the RCEP agreement, a lot of investment flocked to Southeast Asia, including Southeast Asia’s e-commerce platform, in addition to its own Chinese genes TikTok and TEMU, etc., local e-commerce platforms are also one after another to obtain Chinese capital, including our Ninja Van Ninja Van itself was also favored by Chinese capital in its Series E round of financing in 2021.

Here we list a variety of ways to play cross-border e-commerce in Southeast Asia, in addition to the most basic platform operation, just now TikTok’s friends and Mr. Huang mentioned that they also do some marketing on various platforms such as TikTok, the TikTok platform is the simplest, most direct, and the most secure, you can through their own technical skills, or experience on other platforms, you can do self-built station business model to get bigger revenue; you can also choose to maintain your own, and choose to do single-page ads on the mainstream social media