With internet penetration at 85.7% and mobile penetration over 100%, Malaysia holds the crown of fastest emerging eCommerce markets across Southeast Asia. Marketplaces dominate the eCommerce landscape, much like Singapore and other ASEAN countries, and a lot of SMEs sell their inventory through popular marketplaces like Lazada, Shopee, and Amazon.
Like its neighbor, online shopping has made international brands accessible to more Malaysians, which they love. Reportedly, one out of every three Malaysian shops cross-border which makes Malaysia an important cross-border market, only next to Singapore.
The Malaysian eCommerce market is worth an estimated $25 billion, of which B2C eCommerce companies selling physical goods accounts for about 15% or $3.75 billion and is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2019-2023) of 11.4%.
In this blog post, we have estimated the Total Addressable Market (TAM) of B2C eCommerce companies selling physical goods in Malaysia and then profiled the TAM distribution by Product Categories, online sales, and shopping carts.
How is Malaysia’s eCommerce market distributed by product category?
Based on secondary research, validation, and analysis of proprietary data, we estimated that across brands, retailers, and marketplaces, there are approximately 5,000-7,000 eCommerce companies in Malaysia.
The market’s largest segment is Electronics (27%), followed by Fashion (24%) and Furnishings (17.3%)
Based on secondary research, we profiled the universe of Malaysia’s eCommerce companies by online sales.
The distribution pattern reflects the long-tail nature of the Malaysian eCommerce market where a majority of the companies make less than a million dollars in online sales.
We profiled a sample of Malaysia’s universe of eCommerce companies to analyze its distribution by Shopping carts.
64% of eCommerce companies in Malaysia use either OpenCart, WooCommerce, Shopify or Magento. OpenCart emerges as the leader with a 30% coverage.
Below is a list of leading eCommerce companies – both local and international – in Malaysia together with their web traffic and Facebook/Instagram follower data.
The major players from a traffic perspective are Shopee and Lazada, followed by Lelong, eBay, and ezbuy. The same companies emerge as the leading players in neighboring Singapore too.
Conclusion
With rising internet and smartphone penetration rates, a growing middle class that is digitally savvy, and continued growth of Malaysia’s marketplace eCommerce model, the country is evolving into a hotbed of eCommerce activity. Currently, a few major marketplaces dominate the eCommerce scene much like in Singapore and other ASEAN countries, and a lot of SMEs sell their inventory through them. The investment scene in the country, however, remains bleak due to a shortage of funds and structural issues among other reasons. Alibaba’s investment of US$4 billion in Lazada has been the biggest funding round in Malaysia so far.
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RT @RangaEunny: Until recently the Amazon and Shopify systems were separate and distinct groups of entrepreneurs. But they have started to…
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