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More than 90 percent of shopee transactions take place on the app, according to Zhou. photo: Bloomberg

Instead of having a common app for all users, shopee has a separate eCommerce app for each marketplace. According to Zhou, this allows the company to introduce market-specific features that appeal to users in each of its seven markets: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

In Indonesia, for example, shopee launched a section dedicated to Islamic products and services to cater to the majority Muslim market. In countries like Thailand and Vietnam, where celebrity endorsements influence consumer buying habits, shopee offers online stores that sell selected top celebrity items.

"We talk about Southeast Asia as a region, but each country is very different, from the language they speak and the currencies they use, and even in terms of purchasing power," Zhou said, acknowledging that country-specific customization requires 'a much more work' since the shopee needs to have local teams in each country.

Like its rivals, the shopee has also paid close attention to the growing 'shopping entertainment' trend that originated in China. Building on SEA and Garena's gaming experience, it has introduced mobile gaming, live streaming, and chat features into its app to better engage with shoppers and encourage them to purchase on the platform.

shopee operates a customer-to-customer (C2C) marketplace, as well as a marketplace for brands that sell directly to consumers, called shopee Mall. The former is particularly popular with small vendors in the region, who they previously sold their products through platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Zhou said.

By joining platforms like shopee or Lazada, these sellers often receive better support for their online business, especially in areas like payments and logistics, and enjoy an integrated user base. The shopee, in turn, makes money by running ads, as well as charging merchants for services and receiving a portion of transaction fees in certain marketplaces.

Despite promising results in the e-commerce industry, shopee continues to compete fiercely with rivals such as Lazada, which received a total of $4 billion in investment from Alibaba last year. And while the Singaporean platform may lead the way in terms of views and downloads in Southeast Asia, Lazada continues to have the highest number of monthly active users in the Malaysian, Singaporean, Thai and Philippine markets.

But Zhou doesn't seem to mind the competition: "Competition is not a bad thing, it shows there is a lot of interest in the market and potential for growth," he said, adding that more industry players could help bring buyers and sellers together in trade. electronics and grow the industry in general.

The commercial director said that the brand's efficiency in scaling its business will help it stand out in the future. "As the market grows, we should be in a much stronger position to capture a large proportion of the growth."