Two decades ago, serial entrepreneur Ganesh Kumar Bangah (pic above) envisioned a world where electronic commerce (e-commerce) would not only be a reality for consumers but become a significant portion of global trade.

It was this vision that drove Ganesh’s career success from that time on.

Becoming EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012, Ganesh made history by becoming Malaysia’s youngest CEO of a listed company at 23 years old and was recognised as one of Asia’s most influential people according to Society Magazine 2015. He was also regarded as one of Southeast Asia’s Top 30 Tech Founders by Tech In Asia in 2016, and described as ‘one of the most inspiring Malaysian technology entrepreneurs’ by Top 10 of Malaysia.

In 2016, he founded Commerce.Asia, an e-commerce ecosystem that aims to enable brands and merchants to succeed online. The Commerce.Asia group was recognised by APAC CIO Outlook as the Best E-commerce Consulting/Services Company among the selected top 10 companies in the Asia-Pacific region in 2020.

Today, Commerce.Asia offers an end-to-end one-stop solution for brands and businesses looking to sell online. It manages all aspects of their online businesses; from developing their own online stores, to managing product sales across multiple e-marketplaces, including warehousing, payment, delivery, marketing and order management.

This holistic approach centralises all business operations for clients, incorporating best-of-breed technological innovations that range from core business operation management, automated dropship functionalities, and big data analytics, to on-demand fulfilment, one-stop delivery, and managed services.

“Commerce.Asia believes in nurturing ‘win-win’ partnerships with clients while helping them generate sustainable revenue and increase profits consistently. Our group upholds the philosophy of offering a unified ecosystem of opportunities that would create value and wealth for clients,” explained Ganesh.

Riding on a booming e-commerce industry

Due to the booming domestic and regional e-commerce market, the Commerce.Asia group is set to ride and capitalise on an upward trajectory trend whereby ‘the sky’s the limit’.

The Commerce.Asia group recorded Group Gross Merchandise Volumes (GMV) of RM3.5 billion (USD 850 million) in 2020, and that gross profit is set to almost double for 2021 due to the industry’s continued strong growth.

“Our GMV in the first half of 2021 alone was RM2.96 billion which was almost equivalent to the whole of 2020,” said Ganesh.

“Based on that run-rate, we are confident that our GMV this year will more than double compared to last year. This is not surprising as online shopping is now a substantial part of the ‘new norm’ with more Malaysians shifting their spending habits towards online platforms, with this trend accelerating due to restrictions imposed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

A study conducted by Google and Temasek revealed that Malaysia’s e-commerce industry amounted to USD3 billion in 2019, USD6 billion in 2020 before leaping to USD13 billion in 2025.

At the regional level, the Southeast Asia e-commerce was valued at USD38 billion in 2019, USD62 billion in 2020 and set to soar to USD172 billion in 2025.

Today, Commerce.Asia works with a database of more than nine million SMEs across seven countries, and 71,000 active sellers. In total, the ecosystem moves over US$850 million in goods each year in Southeast Asia alone.

The various components that make up the Commerce.Asia Group are as follows:

• In March 2018, Commerce.Asia invested into the SiteGiant e-commerce platform, which provides easy-to-use tools for sellers to create their own branding online and a diverse array of webstore templates to choose from. Subsequently, SiteGiant allows businesses to list products to local and international marketplaces with just a few clicks. Sellers are able to automate online sales, and integrate to local and international online marketplaces. SiteGiant also offers social commerce tools, enabling businesses to reach out via Facebook and Instagram for direct shopping experiences. Today, SiteGiant has 6,500 merchant webstores with 5.7 million products for sale and an annual GMV (2020) of US$570 million.

• Meanwhile, the BizApp Social Commerce platform is a comprehensive mobile and web platform that manages agent-based businesses for social commerce. With more than 400,000 agents that has utilised the platform, Bizapp processes 6.2 million orders processed annually. The platform autonomously captures customer data while managing orders, payments, and agents across multiple levels of a business. In addition, logistics providers and warehouses can print consignment notes, arrange for the shipping of goods, and track the status of shipments directly from their mobile applications.

• For shipping, there is the Shippop Delivery platform, which oversees logistics domestically and internationally. It provides a single integrated interface with various logistics and courier providers, allowing them to prepare the order, print airway bills, and make payments on a unified solution. It essentially brings together multiple delivery providers and numerous payment systems on a single pane of glass to streamline the logistics and supply chain processes for clients. Shippop Delivery currently works with 10 delivery partners and same-day delivery partners across Malaysia.

• Another component is the LetMeStore fulfilment platform, which automates on-demand fulfilment operations by centralising real-time tracking and management of stocks within its warehouses, thereby optimising the costs associated the space utilised with no minimum tenure. It has expanded its warehouse capabilities to cater for bigger storage requirements. Its third warehouse at Subang boast 12,000 square feet, and is currently working on increasing additional space of 8,000 square feet.

• Commerce.Asia Enterprise then combines all the technology components together with managed services that provides a single one-stop solution to brands and businesses to sell online, without requiring in-house client e-commerce expertise. “We also conduct performance marketing for clients, thereby helping them reach out to new potential customers anywhere across Facebook, Instagram, Google, and similar social media channels,” said Ganesh.

• Meanwhile, Commerce.Asia Data owns one of the largest SME database in Southeast Asia with a total of over 9 million SMEs across the region. The company leverages this database to develop inslights and marketing leads to assist clients in accelerating business growth through data which contains accurate information including business addresses, GPS coordinates, industry tagging, classifications and key contact information.

Meanwhile, supportive services within the Commerce.Asia ecosystem include:

• Famsy, one of Malaysia’s largest Print-on-Demand merchandising platform with over five thousand individual sellers. To date, Famsy has some 7,500 partners with 620,000 products printed resulting in some 125,000 orders fulfilled.

• Nuffnang Live Commerce, a joint venture between Commerce.Asia and Netccentric Limited (which Ganesh is Executive Chairman of), is a live video commerce enabler for brands looking to expand their e-commerce business. This platform solution is API integrated with Facebook to provide a seamless user interface from live streaming, automated order management, online payment and fulfilment.

• Kumoten, one of the largest dropshipping platforms in Malaysia with over 100,000 products to choose from.

• The Commerce.Asia Academy, which focuses on talent development for online and customer-centric businesses. The academy has a proven track record of training individuals and businesses to succeed in growing their business online, while its uniquely developed programmes provide businesses with a proven methodology to find product-market fit and achieve sales growth.

• Salesminded, a cloud-based, comprehensive Core Business Operations Suite, enabling business owners to handle their core operations efficiently and connecting them to customers. With its lead management and sales closure features, Salesminded is known for enabling businesses to convert leads to active sales immediately. It also has a one-stop, company wide quotations and proposals management system, payments and collections management, and an in-built accounting toold to allow businesses to only concentrate on core business operations.

One of Commerce.Asia’s many success stories is one of Malaysia’s largest bedding accessories companies. After taking over the client’s official store, Commerce.Asia grew the client’s GMV by close to 1,000% from RM108,000 as at November 2019 to RM1.14 million a year later.

“We also took the lead in helping this client with their marketing efforts and, as a result, their ROAS (incremental revenue divided by marketing investment) shot up to close to 7 times their marketing investments,” said Ganesh, adding that Commerce.Asia also assisted in opening new markets for the client in neighbouring countries (Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore).

“Through e-commerce, we empowered this business to access across untapped potential within their customer demographic, and reach out to various consumers through some of the most popular e-commerce marketplaces in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.”

Setting up Commerce.Asia’s own payment processor

Not one to rest on his laurels, Ganesh is continuing to enrich the Commerce.Asia e-commerce ecosystem, this time by setting up its own payment processor. Through its 100%-owned subsidiary Commerce.Asia DotAsia Payments Sdn Bhd, the company will be able to provide an integrated payment platform that provides solutions for both online and offline merchants.

The Commerce.Asia ecosystem’s estimated annualised Group GMV of over RM6 billion will serve as a captive market for the payment platform. By providing a one-stop, integrated, and complete payment solution for brands, businesses, and SMEs, both online and offline, merchants no longer have to integrate with several parties for payment and collection, which reduces costs, complexity, and increases the ecosystem’s flexibility.

Ganesh’s idea for Commerce.Asia’s growth is straightforward. Via its subsidiary Commerce.Asia Data, the group owns the largest SME database in Southeast Asia, comprising over 600,000 SMEs in Malaysia and 9 million SMEs across the region. Commerce.Asia aims to have at least 1% of the SMEs in its database sign up for Commerce.Asia’s solutions and services.

For SiteGiant, this is a forecasted leap from its current 4,500 merchants with RM2.29 billion worth of gross merchandise value (GMV) to a potential total of 10,500 merchants and RM5.34 billion GMV.

Of that, 1% of the merchants (105) are expected to further sign up for Commerce.Asia Enterprise.

For BizApp, meanwhile, it would mean moving from the current 66,000 active sellers and RM1.06 billion GMV to a forecasted 72,000 active sellers and RM1.16 billion GMV, making for a combined potential GMV of approximately RM6.5 billion across the two platforms.

Furthermore, the captive fulfilment market is forecast to be worth RM325 million in revenue, or 5% of GMV, with Commerce.Asia (via LetMeStore) poised to capture 5% market share, or a targeted revenue of RM16.25 million. Meanwhile, the payments market is forecast to be worth RM130 million in revenue, or 2% of GMV, with Commerce.Asia (via Commerce.Asia Payments) poised to capture 20% market share, or a targeted revenue of RM26 million.

To fund the continuing growth of Commerce.Asia, the group is embarking upon a fundraising exercise via Malaysia’s leading Equity Crowdfunding (ECF) platform, pitchIN. The money raised will fund investments of the payment platform, increase its investments in some of its enablers, fund the regional expansion of Commerce.Asia Enterprise as well as added to the group’s working capital.

There are good reasons for investors to participate in the growth-funding exercise:

• They will be investing in one of Southeast Asia’s most complete end-to-end enabling e-Commerce ecosystems operating within the fastest growing sector in the region’s internet economy.

• It encapsulates a business model with track record and multiple, recurring revenue streams, diversified business risk and high growth potential.

• Led by successful serial entrepreneur, supported by an experienced management team.

• Proprietary technology platform that provides one stop end-to-end solutions for brands and SMEs with multitude of enabling services.

• Reach supported by the largest SME business database in Southeast Asia which is expected to be the initial captive market for the ecosystem.

• It is investing in a group which overachieved all financial indicator targets (Revenue, Gross Profit, EBITDA and Net Profit) set in forecasts this year.

Following this growth-funding exercise, Commerce.Asia is planning for a potential Initial Product Offering (IPO) on a local stock exchange within the next 24 months, a listing via a SPAC or a merger with a local or foreign listed company.

Retail investors can participate with investments from a ticket size as low as RM5,000. Investors who are interested in participating in this growth funding exercise may find out more through Malaysia’s leading licensed equity crowdfunding platform, pitchIN at https://bit.ly/commerceasia-ecf.

Source: Commerce.Asia

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