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HomeBusinessSea’s first decade in Thailand focuses on gaming, e-commerce and digital finance

Sea’s first decade in Thailand focuses on gaming, e-commerce and digital finance

Sea (Thailand), a key player in the country’s digital economy over the past decade, started a decade ago as a video-gaming business under the name “Garena”.

Later, it expanded into e-commerce under the brand “Shopee” before providing digital financial services known as “SeaMoney”.

These three pillars of Sea (Thailand) businesses are firmly interconnected in the digital world.

They serve as platforms for diverse groups of people with different demands. But the three business groups share the same goal of paying back to society by bringing benefits and knowledge to Thai businesses and people through their platforms.

Sea (Thailand) is the local unit of Sea Limited, a tech conglomerate headquartered in Singapore and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

First step: Garena games

Ten years ago, online gaming was viewed as a lesser business rather than bringing any real value to those in the ecosystem.

Maneerut Anulomsombut, chief executive officer of Sea (Thailand), said that Garena was the first to provide world-class online gaming services in Thailand. Initially, the services were PC-based.

Garena also introduced e-sports to Thailand at a time when the concept was largely unheard of in this country.

In 2014, when mobile phones became prevalent, Garena shifted to the mobile-based platform. Its ROV game has been widely popular since 2016.

Garena Free Fire was the first game developed by Garena and launched in 2017. It is aimed particularly at Southeast Asian gamers. World-class game developers in the United States, Japan, South Korea and China do not have this region’s gamers in mind. Their games often appeal to players in Latin America, including Brazil, Mexico and Chile.

Garena Free Fire has been improved for developing countries, now being available in some 130 markets around the world.

Garena World, the largest e-sport event in Southeast Asia, has been held annually in Thailand to promote the kingdom as the region’s e-sport hub.

Also, the company’s Garena Academy helps children improve their digital skills through games.

Thailand’s gaming market has grown considerably, with the number of players increasing from 27 million in 2020 to 32 million in 2021. The market value swelled from 28.9 billion baht to 33 billion over the past year, and the growth is estimated at 15 per cent this year.

The number of gamers has seen continued growth between 2017 and 2021. In the first quarter after the Covid-19 pandemic struck in early 2021, as many as 650 million people played Garena games online across the world.

Shopee is the flagship business

In 2015, when e-commerce was mainly based on PC, which many consumers found to be unsafe and inconvenient, Sea (Thailand) launched its Shopee mobile shopping app in seven Southeast Asian markets, including Thailand.

The app, integrated with a chat feature since its launch, is available in seven different localized versions. For the Thai market, the Shopee app focuses on small vendors and SMEs.

To help SMEs improve the efficiency of online businesses, Shopee University and Shopee Bootcamp offer courses on sales techniques.

In May, Shopee Thailand launched the Shopee International Platform (SIP) to help Thailand-based vendors to capture more opportunities in international markets. Initially, the SIP programme will market goods to Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Big growth in e-commerce market

Online shopping has become popular in Thailand, where the e-commerce market is projected to grow from US$21 billion in 2021 to $35 billion in 2025.

Interestingly, the growth is not limited to big cities. Shopee data showed that in 2021 the number of e-commerce users living outside cities increased by 40 per cent and that of sellers from those areas rose by 70 per cent. That points to the fact that e-commerce has expanded from large cities to other parts of the country.

The number of sellers on the Shopee platform has increased three-fold over the past three years, and the number of brands joining its online marketplace has grown four times. That growth is in line with the global trend. Shopee Global Growth data showed that e-commerce markets in Thailand and other Southeast Asian nations have seen higher growth than in developed countries.

SeaMoney : Digital banking services

Sea (Thailand) started providing digital financial services eight years ago as an e-wallet through the AirPay mobile application, according to Maneerut.

AirPay was initially linked to Garena’s payment system for online games before being expanded to serve a broad range of lifestyles, including ticket booking and utility bill payment.

In 2015, AirPay was adopted as Shopee’s payment system and was later rebranded as ShopeePay.

SeaMoney is licensed by the Bank of Thailand to provide digital personal loan services. It started lending to users of the Shopee platform over a year ago. The SEasyCash loan is for sellers while SPayLater allows Shopee customers to pay in instalments.

In 2020, Thailand’s e-wallet users totalled 18.6 million and the number is expected to grow to 41 million. SeaMoney currently has about 45.8 million active users on its platform.

Looking into the future

Through the Garena Academy, the company encourages the creation of an e-sports ecosystem and the improvement of digital skills among young people that can become their future careers.

Shopee has adopted artificial intelligence technology to improve the customer’s shopping experience. Also, vendors in the platform are encouraged to expand into overseas markets through the SIP programme.

SeaMoney has many new digital financial products in the pipeline while eyeing more permits to provide additional banking services.

Meanwhile, Sea AI Labs is responsible for finding new technologies that have been adapted to the Thai market. Sea, a data-driven company, aims to improve the digital skills of up to 10 million people in Southeast Asia in 10 years. In Thailand, the company has helped 4.18 million Thais to improve their digital skills over the past three years.

Sea Academy offers free online knowledge to help visitors improve their digital skills in gaming & e-sports, e-commerce and digital finance.

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