"Echelon is the biggest tech conference in Southeast Asia, which took place a few days ago in Singapore, and RedMart is one of the top e-commerce companies in the region in online groceries, with US$12M raised so far, 200 employees in a bit less than three years."

"E-commerce is eating the world… and there’s still room for disruption"

"As Roger Egan stresses, e-commerce beat brick and mortar on every point, from price (no space to rent or idle employees), product range (no physical limitation to ware houses) and of course the experience (no queues, no heavy bags for groceries)."

Source e27.co

"And it’s a vicious circle. Once online shopping starts in an industry, there’s no going back, as better prices/range/experiences keep people online, increase cost of maintenance of shops with less revenues."

"Southeast Asia is quite an untapped US$330 billion market with less than one per cent of shopping actually taking place online. Little wonder that companies like Rocket Internet, Alibaba or Rakuten all invest here."

"First, you can see the field of e-commerce as a game of platforms. These two pictures show how different it works for:

• B2C e-commerce (less control on experience, on stock availability) such as Amazon and RedMart or Lazada in Southeast Asia
• Traditional marketplaces (lot of selection, no customer experience) like Tmall, Rakuten in Asia
• Asset Light Instant Delivery Marketplaces like FoodPanda, Instacart, Uber, eBay. Now, who partners with retailers and have personal shoppers who buy the stuff and get it delivered in an hour or a day
• Subscription based e-commerce such as BellaBox, Dollar Shave Club — highly convenient if you have the purchasing power
• C2C platforms like Taobao
• Private Label and value added services such as Zalora, Warby Parker, Bonobos (you send back what you don’t want)
• Daily Deals such as Gilt, Groupon
• Price comparison engines — mySupermarket, Pinterest, VroomVroomVroom, mogujie.com — where you select from many, keep only the best
• Fulfillment/Delivery such DHL, or recent alliance of SingPost and Alibaba, Ta-Q-Bin
• e-commerce software platform to ensure the last mile delivery.

Recent e-commerce trends in the industry includes:

• From “the everything store” (Amazon, Alibaba, JD.com) fighting with big retailers such as Walmart or Tesco, teaming up with delivery and added services, and a few being out of the scope (Bonobos: let’s do everything ourselves)
• Blurring lines between logistics and e-commerce companies (the site is the easy part), between retailer and manufacturers as well (what future for P&G or Unilever?)"

"Roger Egan played the game of predictions and gave a few cool insights and bets that we share here:

• The great e-commerce convergence: B2C and marketplace converge (purchasing power of B2C + fast growth of marketplace) as seen with Amazon buying Zappos, Diapers.
• The entire control on supply chain and logistics win: The site is easy, the supply chain is hard. It’s hard not to think about how Apple made a closed garden, but one which works.

• Tech companies and e-commerce companies converge, especially if we take into account the recent moves of Google Express, Alibaba in Singpost, Apple into Beats, Uber into same-day delivery ambitions.
• Content, community and commerce converge, with Pinterest being an obvious case (and winner), where pictures can be shared and links back efficiently to e-commerce websites (you can now even have e-mail alerts when the price of one of your pins drop)
• Ecosystem wins, with a bigger value than the sum of its part.
• Retailers will become manufacturers: now that they master the distribution, why wouldn’t they be tempted to build the things they sell? P&G and Unilever may well be next on the list of big disruptions
• Convenience and gratification are key: drone-delivery, 3D printed replacement parts, will increase brand loyalty.

These trends should be a tool for you to use and ask yourself where do you position yourself and potential lines of future disruption."

More info here.

Ecommerce will account for USD 53 billion of global FMCG sales by 2016, meaning a USD 17 billion (47%) increase as compared to the present USD 36 billion.

"Asia will be a major growth market. South Korea will continue its rising trend with online accounting for 13.8% of FMCG sales by 2016. Presently, 55% of Korean shoppers buy online. Online FMCG market share will continue to grow rapidly in Taiwan and China to achieve 4.5% and 3.3% share of the total FMCG market respectively."

"UK online shoppers buy on the internet once a month and their carts are 5 times bigger than offline (in most countries online shopping carts are twice as large as their offline equivalents)."

"However, click and collect offer in France, referred to as “Drive”, is predicted to outperform the UK by 2016 with 6.1% versus 5.5% of market share respectively."

More info here.

Online shopping of packaged goods is expected to grow globally from a 3.7% ratio in 2014 up to 5.2% in 2016, accounting for almost USD 53 billion.

"Online sales of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) excluding fresh produce would rise 47% by 2016 from a current USD 36 billion."

"South Korea would keep its lead position for online FMCG sales, increasing ecommerce’s share of the market to 13.8% by 2016 from 10.2% in 2014."

"France is expected to surpass the UK, due to the popularity of in-store collection facilities for goods ordered online, with online sales of packaged goods rising to 6.1% by 2016 from 3.9% in 2014, growing more slowly in Britain to 5.5% from 4.9%."

"For the US market, about one quarter of all spending to be on consumer goods, reaching about USD 222 billion a year."

More info here.

The Australian ecommerce sector may not be able to catch up with the Asia counterpart in terms of growth, Sarv Girn, chief information officer at the Reserve Bank of Australia warns.

"However, Girn reveals that the internet penetration rate in Asia is very low, when compared with Australia, but the former is growing more rapidly than the rest of the world. India, which has the third largest online user base globally after China and the US, has an internet penetration rate of just 17.4 per cent."

"Consumers in the Asia-Pacific region will spend more money online than the US for the first time ever in 2014. And for every USD 10 spent, 6 will come from China."

"According to official figures from the China Internet Network information Center, China has 618 million internet users as of December 2013. In other words, China has an online population 33 times that of Australia with only a 45.8% penetration rate. Half of them shops online."

"A partnership between China’s ecommerce company Alibaba and Australia Post has been set in place in order to simplify cross-border steps between the two countries. Through the agreement, businesses no longer have to register as Chinese business entities or employ local staff in the country. Australian businesses now have the option of piggy-backing off Australia Post and shipping their products from Australia."

More info here.

"As the proportion of e-commerce accounted for in consumption is growing, the demand for cross-border electricity providers increasingly large. With the Shanghai pilot platform line of cross-border electricity supplier, electricity suppliers will solve the problem of export tax rebates, reduce costs and bring substantial positive foreign trade enterprises, but also the underlying stocks of the catalyst."

"Shanghai cross-border trade aspects of e-commerce services to select three pilot content: to promote and improve the online direct purchase of imported models, online shopping bonded imported models and general export model. Direct purchase of imported models and online shopping bonded imported model was on trial operation last November. Up to now, a total of 24 home appliance supplier, six cross-border logistics enterprises in the customs completed record. Related industries, including third-party payment, logistics, electronic business platform, which third-party payment, and airport logistics and other areas of the company is expected to lead to benefit. Related investment targets include business treasure, Commodity City, Sinotrans Development, Focus Technology, CTS logistics, Yangtze investment."

"Data shows that in 2011 the cross-border e-commerce transactions amounted to 1.6 trillion yuan, an increase of 33%; 2012 cross-border transaction volume 2 trillion yuan, an increase of over 25%. Prospects Industry Research Institute analysis, with the start of cross-border e-commerce platform for the pilot, our focus on cross-border e-commerce industry will show explosive growth in 2015 is expected to exceed 4 trillion."

More info here.