‘Southeast Asia online economy to reach $50 billion this year’

Bloomberg

Southeast Asia’s internet economy, spanning online travel to ride-hailing, will reach $50 billion this year, putting it on a solid trajectory to grow fourfold by 2025, according to a joint research report by Google and Temasek Holdings Pte.
As more consumers buy airline tickets and book hotels through smartphones, the region’s online travel market expanded from $19.1 billion in 2015 to $26.6 billion in 2017, according to a report the two companies released on Tuesday. The research covered four key sectors of the internet economy: travel, media, ride-hailing and e-commerce.
Online shopping and ride-hailing have come into focus as Grab, Uber Technologies Inc. and Go-Jek capture consumer preferences with evolving business models. Of the $12 billion of capital invested in Southeast Asian internet companies since 2016, $9 billion was raised by its unicorns, or startups with more than $1 billion valuations. The region, which includes Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, raised just $1 billion in 2015.
“This shows how global and regional investors have favoured the largest and most established internet companies,” the report said. The growth is being driven by a surging number of new smartphone users. Southeast Asia will have 330 million monthly active internet users by the end of 2017—equivalent to the size of the US population— after adding more than 70 million users since 2015.
E-commerce sales of new goods will reach $10.9 billion in gross merchandise value in 2017.