Singapore's Shopee taps local delivery heroes to drive 300% stock surge
Amazon
TikTok Shop,
Shein , Temu. But in Southeast Asia, home to 675 million people and a US$160 billion online shopping market, the reigning monarch is an app the colour of a traffic cone.
Advertisement
It's called Shopee. And it is thriving.
Owned by
Singapore -based Sea Ltd., Shopee has pulled off one of the more improbable corporate comebacks in recent memory, sending its stock soaring more than 300 per cent since the start of 2024. A key secret weapon is a little-known logistics operation powered by an army of homemakers, students and retirees. And the help of some very large Ikea bags.
That operation is SPX Express, a home-grown in-house delivery network that Sea spent years building in the shadows. While rivals like Amazon plastered ads across the city for Black Friday and TikTok Shop flooded feeds with flash sales, Shopee was busy rewiring the infrastructure of Southeast Asian commerce one community at a time.
They are a familiar sight in Singapore. The retired 'uncle' in flip-flops, slinging parcels across a housing block in an ever-practical blue Ikea bag. Or an entrepreneurial homemaker busily sorting a makeshift Shopee kiosk beside the lift. They are the human backbone of SPX Express, which now handles most of Shopee's several billion parcels annually.
SPX Express says it delivers 90 per cent of its parcels the next day in Singapore. In the rest of Asia, almost half are delivered within two days. Photo: Shutterstock
And Wall Street has noticed. Shopee's success has helped Sea inch toward a US$100 billion market cap, on the heels of Singaporean banking giant DBS, the region's most valuable company. The stock, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has soared 324 per cent since hitting a low in January last year.
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However, the cost of this alignment has become increasingly apparent, as it undermines India's non-aligned heritage and exposes it to US pressures, particularly under Trump's second term. Trump's first term was characterized by a 'carrot' approach, enticing India with defense cooperation, technology transfers and diplomatic gestures like the 'Howdy Modi' event in 2019. These moves were designed to pull India into the US-led Indo-Pacific framework to counter China. The US also enticed India by vowing it would encourage American companies to shift manufacturing from China to India during the Covid-19 pandemic, though firms like General Motors, Ford, and Harley-Davidson exited India, citing economic challenges. Despite these setbacks, the narrative of a robust US-India 'friendship' was carefully cultivated. In contrast, Trump's second term has adopted a 'stick' approach, marked by economic and diplomatic coercion. 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Singapore's Shopee taps local delivery heroes to drive 300% stock surge
In the battle royale of global e-commerce, the names are familiar and formidable: Amazon TikTok Shop, Shein , Temu. But in Southeast Asia, home to 675 million people and a US$160 billion online shopping market, the reigning monarch is an app the colour of a traffic cone. Advertisement It's called Shopee. And it is thriving. Owned by Singapore -based Sea Ltd., Shopee has pulled off one of the more improbable corporate comebacks in recent memory, sending its stock soaring more than 300 per cent since the start of 2024. A key secret weapon is a little-known logistics operation powered by an army of homemakers, students and retirees. And the help of some very large Ikea bags. That operation is SPX Express, a home-grown in-house delivery network that Sea spent years building in the shadows. While rivals like Amazon plastered ads across the city for Black Friday and TikTok Shop flooded feeds with flash sales, Shopee was busy rewiring the infrastructure of Southeast Asian commerce one community at a time. They are a familiar sight in Singapore. The retired 'uncle' in flip-flops, slinging parcels across a housing block in an ever-practical blue Ikea bag. Or an entrepreneurial homemaker busily sorting a makeshift Shopee kiosk beside the lift. They are the human backbone of SPX Express, which now handles most of Shopee's several billion parcels annually. SPX Express says it delivers 90 per cent of its parcels the next day in Singapore. In the rest of Asia, almost half are delivered within two days. Photo: Shutterstock And Wall Street has noticed. Shopee's success has helped Sea inch toward a US$100 billion market cap, on the heels of Singaporean banking giant DBS, the region's most valuable company. The stock, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has soared 324 per cent since hitting a low in January last year.
