Recently, Jack Ma announced his retirement from a 19 year in the making the success of Alibaba Group, at the age of 54. He led the company from his humble beginnings back in his apartment to now what is known as an e-commerce giant worth $420 billion today.
The Philippine e-marketplace penetrate more Filipinos in terms of social media activity. However, it struggles to establish a strong hold in terms of traffic activity as international players are still the preferred choice for most Filipinos.
The Philippine e-commerce has been continuously growing its online market reach from the rising middle class and tech-savvy population mainly consisting of “millennials”. In fact, the global millennial workforce is expected to be at least half of the world population by 2020, according to PwC report.
The population of women accounts for about half of the world’s working-age population, yet women are less likely to be given opportunities for economic participation. “If every country matched the progress toward gender parity of its fastest-improving neighbour, global GDP could increase by up to $12 trillion in 2025.” according to the McKinsey Global Institute 2018 Report.
Due to the competitive eCommerce landscape across Asia as well as its high consumer expectations, there is an increasing demand for free shipping, faster deliveries and consumer-centric return policies. In fact, according to UPS Pulse of the Online Shoppers 2018, only 57% of online shoppers in Asia are satisfied with their shopping experience, the lowest in all regions surveyed. Among the areas in online retail surveyed, return policy had one of the lowest satisfaction rating in Asia. The results only 47% are satisfied with the ease of making returns, although only 4 in 10 have returned an online purchase.
In 2017, Philippine Government’s Initiative “The Philippine Roadmap for the Digital Start-ups” launched incubator and accelerator programs: AIM-Dado Banatao Incubator, Startup Village, Voyager Innovations, Google Launchpad Accelerator; the passing of the senate bills: The Innovative Startup Bill, Philippine Innovation Act and the development of event management pioneering TechTonic. It’s also in this pivotal year, that the country had its first unicorn in Robbie Antonio’s Revolution Precrafted.
Last September 13, Apple unveiled its most anticipated flagships iPhone 8, iPhone 8 plus and iPhone X which coincided with its 10th year anniversary. With its full retail prices of less than 1,000 USD – the most expensive iPhone to date, there is a growing market for less priced older iPhone models.
Companies from small and medium enterprises (SME) to giant corporations are shifting to e-commerce to broaden their consumer base despite Philippines’ “mall culture”. The Philippine e-commerce has the lowest retail e-commerce sales share against SEA markets but shows potential with its growing internet and smartphone penetration, rising middle class and young population. According to Google-Tesmark Holdings joint research, Philippines’ e-commerce market share will reach 9.7 Billion- 11.05% of SEA projected digital economy in 2025.
To challenge the notion that startup founders should have background in technology to build a startup company, iPrice Group conducted a focused study in SEA markets to determine if fields of study and level of education influence their success as founders. In the Philippine startup scene, the results suggest that business and social sciences are the 2 most common fields of study among Philippine startup founders and co-founders. Interestingly, more founders and co-founders took their bachelor’s degree in the “Big 4” Philippine Universities and later pursue a higher degree abroad.
Hi participants of the iPrice Innovators Grant,