Following SheIn, Shopee expands Latin America presence by entering Colombia and Chile

This article was originally published in Chinese on Momentum Works’s WeChat platform. Translated into English by Joyce Zhao

In our Bloombing Ecommerce in Indonesia Report briefing held last week. We casually mentioned that after Brazil and Mexico, Shopee will further expand in the Latin American market, and the next entry was likely to be Colombia:

According to Reuters, Shopee has just enabled its websites, Apps social media handles in Colombia and Chile:

Not forgetting Free Shipping

On its Colombian site, this is how Shopee introduces itself:

Shopee es la plataforma líder de compras en línea en el sudeste asiático, con sede en Singapur. Contamos con plataformas en países como Malasia, Tailandia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Filipinas y Taiwán. Y estamos brindando la misma experiencia increíble de compras en Brasil, México, Chile y Colombia.

“Shopee is Southeast Asia’s leader in online shopping, headquartered in Singapore. We have operating platforms in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan. We are now bringing the same amazing shopping experience to Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Colombia.”

Not forgetting Opening Sales too

These two markets are definitely no stranger to China’s cross-border ecommerce in 2021. Chile’s top five iOS shopping Apps include SheIn, AliExpress and Wish. Latin America’s regional players,  Mercado Libre (Meli) and Rocket-incubated Dafiti, are surrounded:

The situation in Colombia, in the northern part of South America, is slightly different. In addition to SheIn, Meli, and AliExpress, Amazon is also available. The classified platform OLX, under Naspers, has also made it to the top five:

In our recent sharing co-hosted by Cento Ventures, we highlighted that the tech and investment ecosystems in Latin America and Southeast Asia are actually quite similar:

As we mentioned a few times, ecommerce market in Latin America is very attractive.

Simply put, the population is about the same as Southeast Asia (more than 600 million), and its economy is larger than Southeast Asia (many countries have a per capita GDP of more than US$10,000).

Although the region has been facing some challenges in recent years, the foundation is still considerably strong. Moreover, the efficiency and economic benefits that ecommerce brings to consumers are beyond the reach of traditional supply chains.

The following is the ecommerce sales growth in each region measured by eMarketer:

For a long time, AliExpress was the best Chinese internet company with a presence in Brazil. Years of experimentation and exploration have paved the way (for other players).

Shopee has grown rapidly after entering Brazil – even though it probably still has a tremendous amount to learn to be able to compete effectively with the local giants.

Just that the earworms of Shopee’s baby shark song can be heard in more places now: