Category: Singapore

Key Insights into Singapore’s Ride-Sharing Market Landscape

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Key Insights into Singapore’s Ride-Sharing Market Landscape

Seriously – can any one of these so-called reporters try this stuff out and report on actual experience versus what the companies say they do?

Apart from Grab and GoJek the rest of these are a joke. Comfort is it for Taxis.

Ryde – never got it to work.

TADA – it’s a crypto play masquerading as a car service. Tried 5 times. Booked one ride – the rest the driver cancelled on me.

Kardi – never heard of it.

Urge – never heard of it

The pool of drivers and cars is the same.

My guess is none of these other players will ever make it.

Sea is raising up to $1.5B for its Shopee e-commerce business in Southeast Asia | TechCrunch

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Well this is a battle to watch.

Since Amazon Prime showed up that’s pretty much where I get my stuff – apart from going to the store or the wet market. Yes – that’s still a thing in Asia and I love it.

I get the other stuff I need from iHerb which has great prices and ships for free to Singapore. Can’t beat it.

I still very rarely wonder in the untamed marketplace that is Lazada or Shopee. I have tried them both for some weird stuff I couldn’t get elsewhere but generally are disappointed with the quality of it. For sure though the marketplace model of each holds very little interest from me so I am always amazed at the numbers for these products but of course not a lot of profit yet.

Then add in the while Carousell and Facebook stuff for lots of other P2P transactions which our family has used way more than Shopee or Lazada but both could be done so much better. I actually there is some opportunity in the P2P space being done right but maybe Carousell and FB are just too big now.

Anyways – welcome to SEAsia! Its gonna be a crazy next 10 years!

Sea is raising up to $1.5B for its Shopee e-commerce business in Southeast Asia | TechCrunch

Alibaba Bets on Frenchman to Lead High-Stakes Southeast Asia Expansion – Bloomberg

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

I’m not a huge fan of the product but I use it from time to time and it works, but let’s admit that Singapore is easy.

I used to use redmart but saw no reason to when amazon prime arrived. Personally I think it’s a mistake that they are rolling redmart into the platform but I am sure they have their reasons.

All that aside I think appointing Pierre is the right move and good to see Alibaba learning a trick or two. Pierre has the history and knows what he is doing. The competition will be stiff but I think having a founder in charge is a better look versus what it looked like Alibaba was planning to do.

Congrats and good luck!

Pierre Poignant will have to vanquish well-funded regional rivals if he is to achieve Alibaba’s vision of becoming a global player.

— Read on www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-03/alibaba-bets-on-frenchman-to-lead-high-stakes-southeast-asia-expansion