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Friday, March 29, 2024

PH e-commerce seen reaching P220b by 2020

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The electronic commerce market in the Philippines is expected to reach P220 billion by 2020, as more Filipinos acquire smartphones, the chief executive of online shopping platform Lazada Philippines said Monday.

Lazada Philippines co-founder and chief executive Inanc Balci said in an interview at Makati Shangri La Hotel the country’s potential to expand online trading was “immensely huge” as connection to the Internet became more rapid with the improving income level of most Filipinos.

“This means that the e-commerce market size will more or less [reach] P220 billion for the Philippines. We are working hard to hit the targets,” Balci said at the sidelines of the launch of the company’s 3-day grand Christmas sale happening on Dec. 10 to 12.

Balci said e-commerce penetration rate in the Philippines was expected to rise from just 0.2 percent or 0.3 percent of the population in 2015 to around 4 percent by 2020.

Lazada is the single biggest online shopping platform in the Philippines today with an estimated 80-percent market share on non-food and non-travel category. The remaining 20 percent is being shared by various online start-ups.

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Lazada, which employs 1,850 individuals in the country, has 4,500 merchants selling 1.2 million products on its mobile platform and website.

Balci said that on Nov. 11 which marked the start of its online revolution, Lazada recorded 2.4 million visits, up from 700,000 a year ago. Customers bought 120,000 items on the website on the same day, up from 44,000 items last year.

He said in 2016, the company planned to add new categories within the platform to include digital solutions such as electronic credits for gaming and other similar products as well as coupons for the services industry like hair dressers, restaurants and wellness companies.

“At one point we may also start selling e-books but that’s not in the agenda yet. We are slowly moving to provide digital solutions to both tangible and intangible items,” said Balci.

He said the company was also pushing for micro, small and medium enterprises within the platform. MSMEs comprise the majority of vendors at Lazada while international merchants or those selling on cross border trade were not as significant as those MSMEs in terms of volume.

“And it will stay that way for many years. We have been talking to the Philippine government to help us how we can be of more assistance to MSMEs in the market. At the same time, we are talking to big brands, since we’ll be having super big announcement coming by the end of December,” Balci said.

The company introduced the online revolution promo on Nov. 11, when it recorded the sales so far.

“For the grand Christmas sale, we are hoping for a bigger number. We expect to exceed the sales we achieved during the online revolution promo,” Balci said.

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