I built a gaming company, an e-commerce company, and a fintech company. At the same time. In Southeast Asia. Everyone said pick one. I said: they feed each other. Garena funds Shopee. Shopee feeds SeaMoney.
Southeast Asia has 700 million people and most of them cannot pay for things online. That is not a payments problem. That is an infrastructure problem. We are building the infrastructure.
I went to a street market in Bangkok and realized every small vendor there had amazing products but no way to sell them online. That was the spark for Zilingo.
In Southeast Asia, fast shipping used to mean a week. We made it mean tomorrow. That changed everything.
E-commerce in Southeast Asia is just getting started. There are 700 million people and most of them just got their first smartphone. The volume is coming.
I moved to Singapore because Southeast Asia is where the growth is. 700 million people, rising middle class, mobile-first. This is the next Silicon Valley.
Southeast Asia will follow China's digital transformation with a ten year lag. We are positioning for that future.
Alibaba invested $4.5 billion because Southeast Asia is the next China for e-commerce.
Uber said no. That was the best thing that ever happened to Grab. We had to build it ourselves, which meant we built it right for Southeast Asia.
Southeast Asia is not one market. It is eight different markets that speak fifty languages and have ten different regulatory environments. The company that figures this out wins everything.
The next billion people are coming online in our region. It's a huge opportunity and an equally huge pool of talent in the region is set to make the most of it.
Grab and Gojek brought the spotlight to the region by raising money around the world and selling South-east Asia to investors.
Before 2014, when I travelled to Indonesia or Vietnam for a conference, there would always be a translator. Now, you do not need one.
Southeast Asian founders are more ambitious now because they have support from the ecosystem.
There's a micro doom loop that is spinning so fast and I don't want this region to be set back.
I think the trend will be very similar to what China went through several years ago, or even in the US 50 years ago.
I want to help build Southeast Asian globals, meaning companies that were built in Southeast Asia but are global names.
South-east Asia and, in particular, Indonesia continue to present compelling medium to long-term investment opportunities.