E-commerce Sector Growth

Southeast Asia's e-commerce just hit US$185 billion in GMV, growing 16% YoY. But the real story isn't the headline number, it's what's driving it. The latest e-Conomy SEA 2025 report from Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company reveals that video commerce has become the region's new growth engine. Over the last two years, video commerce GMV expanded 2.5x. Revenue grew 33% from 2023 to 2024, with another 18% growth projected for 2025. The mechanic is elegant: high volume, low-cost purchases at massive scale. The number of sellers actively using video platforms surged 80% YoY to over 3 million stores. Video isn't just another channel, it's the most cost-efficient way to connect with consumers through trusted, engaging content. Here's the market breakdown: Non-grocery dominates at US$161B (SEA-6) in 2025, heading to US$300B by 2030. Online grocery is smaller but growing fast at US$24B in 2025, projected US$59B by 2030. Both segments are riding digital adoption and product diversification. But here's the sleeper opportunity: Retail Media Networks (RMNs) RMNs are expected to become a US$3B market. SEA marketplaces currently show ~2% ad depth (ads as % of GMV). That's behind China (~7%) and the US (~2.2%). The gap isn't a weakness, it's untapped monetization potential worth billions. What this means for startups: If you're building in e-commerce, video commerce infrastructure is the unlock. Tools for creators, video production at scale, analytics for video-driven sales—these are picks-and-shovels plays in a gold rush. The 3 million sellers using video need better tech, better insights, better conversion tools. Online grocery remains under-penetrated. US$24B growing to US$59B by 2030 means there's room for vertical plays, logistics innovation, and last-mile solutions that work in SEA's fragmented geography. Don't sleep on RMNs. If ad depth moves from 2% to even 4% over the next few years, that's a doubling of a multi-billion dollar market. First-party data platforms, conversion optimization tools, and attribution tech for marketplace advertising are all opportunities. What this means for investors: Video commerce isn't hype, it's demonstrated 2.5x growth with strong unit economics. Companies enabling this shift (creator tools, video infrastructure, logistics for micro-transactions) are worth deep diligence. The RMN opportunity is structural. SEA's marketplaces are under-monetized compared to mature markets. As they close the gap, the early enablers of that infrastructure will capture disproportionate value. Grocery's trajectory from US$24B to US$59B isn't sexy, but it's predictable growth in a massive market. Defensible logistics, supplier networks, and regional density matter here more than flashy tech. The region's e-commerce market is maturing, not slowing. The companies that understand where the puck is going will define the next wave. https://lnkd.in/g3qA8a8i

The ICICI Securities report on India’s internet sector highlights a larger transition taking shape inside e-commerce.   Scale alone no longer defines leadership.   The next phase appears increasingly tied to infrastructure depth, logistics control, category mix, and reach across India.   India’s e-commerce market currently stands at roughly USD 70bn and could scale to USD 174-214bn by 2030. More importantly, Tier 2-4 cities and rural India are expected to contribute over 60% of future demand. That shift changes the entire operating model for digital commerce platforms.   Success increasingly depends on: * logistics coverage * strong seller ecosystems * the ability to cross-sell across multiple services   The report also highlights how major platforms are now focusing more on monetising existing users instead of chasing consumer acquisition. That usually signals market maturity.   Flipkart’s ecosystem strategy becomes particularly interesting in that context. Myntra, Shopsy, Cleartrip, Flipkart Minutes, and Ekart all sit on top of the same broader infrastructure layer, creating operational synergies that become harder to replicate at scale.   With 19k+ serviceable pin codes and roughly 90% in-house fulfilment through Ekart, the company has built more than a marketplace.   It has built a nationwide commerce and distribution network aligned with Bharat’s next consumption cycle. https://lnkd.in/gx_vyvum

🚀 Walmart’s E-Commerce Surge: $121B in 2024, Profitability Achieved! 💰 While Amazon often dominates e-commerce headlines, Walmart has been quietly revolutionizing its online presence: • $120.9B in online sales in 2024, marking a 21% year-over-year increase. • E-commerce now constitutes 18% of total revenue, up from 13.6% in 2023. • A remarkable 47% growth in just two years. The catalyst? A strategic overhaul of their supply chain and delivery systems: • Transitioned from traditional ZIP code mapping to a honeycomb-style hexagonal system, enhancing delivery efficiency. • Expanded same-day delivery reach to 93% of U.S. households, with plans to achieve 95% coverage by end of 2025. • The Spark delivery platform, leveraging geospatial technology, added 12 million new households to its network in January alone. These innovations have led to significant operational efficiencies: • 30% of U.S. orders now utilize fast delivery options. • Delivery cost per order decreased by 20% in Q4. • Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce sector achieved profitability for the first time in Q1 2025. David Guggina, Executive VP and Chief eCommerce Officer, emphasized the “flywheel effect”: “When customers choose fast delivery, they shop more frequently, buy a broader range of items, and basket size increases.” This transformation underscores a pivotal lesson for retailers: Seamless integration between physical stores and e-commerce platforms is not just beneficial—it’s essential. Walmart’s journey from a traditional brick-and-mortar giant to a formidable e-commerce contender exemplifies the power of strategic innovation and adaptability. #Ecommerce #RetailInnovation #DigitalTransformation #Walmart #SupplyChain #Logistics #Omnichannel #RetailStrategy

India’s e-commerce market is expected to grow more than 2x from current levels, reach $300 billion by 2030 ! Yet it will account for only 7-8% of total consumer spending. According to the recently published Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report, the coming years in India will see an ecosystem, where digital and physical retail operate as complementary channels within a single consumer journey. Some key data points that stand out - - The number of online shoppers is expected to grow from ~300 million today to ~420-440 million by 2030. - 90-95% of online shoppers still buy offline, with nearly half of offline shoppers researching online before making a purchase. - Category-focused platforms already account for ~60%+ of e-commerce spending, while horizontal marketplaces now represent roughly a third. - Quick-commerce (growing at 110-130% CAGR), social commerce (driven largely by Tier-2/3 cities, growing at 40–45% CAGR) and vertical marketplaces are expanding the role of digital channels across both high-frequency and impulse categories, bringing new consumers into the fold. The future of retail in India will not be defined by channels competing with each other - but by channels working together. Consumers will increasingly discover products on social platforms, research them on marketplaces, experience them in stores and order in possibly via quick commerce. The future will be ‘clicks + bricks’ truly !! For FMCG brands, the implications will be manifold - - Discovery will increasingly move online. Even for categories that remain predominantly offline, digital will play a critical role in discovery and decision making. - Quick commerce will redefine urban consumption. Demand patterns are shifting toward smaller pack sizes, impulse consumption and higher purchase frequency - pantry stocking be damned. - Category fragmentation will accelerate. Online-forward brands are launching 1.5–3x more new products than offline-forward brands due to faster consumer feedback loops. Expect increased competition across premium, niche and functional segments. - Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets will shape the next growth cycle. Smaller cities and middle-income households will expand the addressable market for FMCG brands. If you are looking to take your brand mass, succeeding in these towns will be critical. - Having a strong multi-channel presence will become a strategic advantage. If yours is a mid-sized/regional brand, ensure that the make-up starts, if it hasn’t already. For FMCG companies, the future growth playbook will require integrating the various channels into a single consumer strategy. The real question will be, if most brands are structurally ready for this shift, and more so, the regional and mid-sized ones ? #retail #India #growthstory #connectedcommerce

Something bothers me… 🤔 #Ecommerce keeps growing... and yet, somehow, it’s not growing. Let me explain 👇 When I look at the data from the major European e-commerce markets (France, Germany and the UK), there’s a weird contradiction: #Online sales in euros and pounds keep climbing every year but e-commerce’s share of total #retail has barely moved since 2020. In France, it’s been stuck around 11 %. (FEVAD data) In Germany, about 13–14 %. (Handelsverband Deutschland e.V. (HDE) data) In the UK, around 25 % (no higher than five years ago). (Office for National Statistics data) So what’s going on? How can e-commerce boom while its share plateaus? Here’s the catch: revenue shows market size, share shows penetration. Retail as a whole is growing again. People are shopping more, online and offline. So even though online sales rise, they’re just keeping pace, not taking more ground. And that’s not necessarily bad news. It’s the sign of a somehow mature market, not a stagnant one. #Ecommerce isn’t the disruptor anymore. It’s something like the baseline. The growth story now lies in how it grows - omnichannel, cross-border, agentic commerce, AI-driven personalization, etc. - rather than how much it grows. The Covid boom was the acceleration. Now comes the evolution I guess. 😅

Indian e-commerce grew 13.5% in 2025. Expected. What wasn't expected: the quality of that growth. We just closed our 2025 year-end analysis at ClickPost. 338 million orders across 12 months; and three shifts stand out. Tier-3 delivery speeds improved 29% year-over-year. Four times faster than Tier-1's 7% gain. The playbook brands spent years refining in metros is now replicating horizontally. Platforms like Meesho are proving you can run IPO-grade operations outside the top 8 cities. Prepaid adoption hit 41%, up from 32%. Returns dropped from 29% to 22%. These aren't related, but they signal the same thing: predictability. People pay upfront when deliveries are reliable. They stop ordering ‘just in case if this doesn’t fit’ when product accuracy improves. Both reduce friction. AOV climbed 21% as a result. GST 2.0 landed in September, right as festive sales began. Demand spiked 23-25%. On-time delivery rates have improved from 28% to 36% during the year. The network absorbed the surge and performed better. That doesn't happen without intelligent allocation running underneath. The pattern is clear. We're past the infrastructure build phase. The e-Commerce competitive layer now is intelligence. How you route, predict, recover. Roads and warehouses are table stakes. Full report: https://lnkd.in/grzKVR9U

Southeast Asia e-commerce is entering its second decade. The next phase could take the market to ~$650B. Growth is projected to moderate from ~40% annually over the past ten years to around 14% over the next decade. At the same time, the market is expected to grow from roughly $180B in 2025 to around $650B by 2035. I’ve seen this pattern before. In the early years of any e-commerce market, growth hides a lot. You can scale quickly without fully optimized operations. You can tolerate inefficiencies because demand is expanding fast enough to absorb them. As markets mature, the margin for error narrows. Growth starts coming from share rather than pure expansion. Advertising becomes more competitive. Capital gets more selective. Operators who understand their numbers deeply begin to separate from those riding momentum. I’ve noticed this shift across multiple regions. The conversation with serious sellers has changed over the years. It’s less about “how fast can we grow?” and more about “how defensible is this business?” Southeast Asia is reaching that phase. The opportunity is substantial. The bar is simply higher. And higher bars tend to produce better businesses.

U.S. e-commerce just crossed $10 trillion in cumulative sales.   But the number itself is not what matters.  What matters is the pattern behind it and what that pattern tells brands about how to compete in 2026 and beyond.  ▼  Three phases, one trajectory  Since 1999, e-commerce has evolved through three remarkably consistent growth phases:  ► Emergence (2001 to 2007): 20 to 40% quarterly growth   Online shopping transitioned from novelty to necessity.  ► Expansion (2010 to 2019): 10 to 20% quarterly growth   E-commerce became infrastructure, not experiment.  ► Maturity (2022 to present): 5 to 10% quarterly growth   The market has stabilized at a sustainable, predictable baseline.  Only two global crises (2008 financial collapse and 2020 pandemic) disrupted this linear progression.   And in both cases, e-commerce recalibrated to its underlying trajectory within two years.  The pandemic boost was not a step change. It was borrowed growth that has now reverted to the mean.  ▼  The scale is massive, even at slower growth  U.S. e-commerce now generates in one quarter what took the first five years of record keeping combined to achieve.  Q3 2025 alone: $275 billion   Cumulative total through Q2 2005: $270 billion  The 5.2% quarterly growth rate is the new baseline.   It delivers more absolute dollars in a single quarter than entire years once produced.  ▼  What changed in the mature phase  The competitive landscape fundamentally transformed.  ► Active seller counts on Amazon declined 25% from peak levels   Casual sellers exited. The bar for execution has never been higher.  ► The number of sellers generating $100 million plus annually quadrupled   Operational excellence now determines survival.  ► Amazon seller registration rates hit decade lows in 2025   The hobbyists are gone. What remains is professional infrastructure.  ► Traffic per active Amazon seller is up 31% since 2021   Numerical competition decreased, which means more opportunity for those who execute.  ▼  What this means for brands selling on Amazon  The days of "throw it on Amazon and see what happens" are over.  To compete in this mature phase, brands must now master:   ► Advertising optimization and profitability modeling   ► AI enabled operations and forecasting   ► Complex supply chains and multi region logistics   ► Multi platform strategies that treat Amazon as part of a portfolio  The brands that win in 2026 will not be the ones chasing viral growth.   They will be the ones building sustainable, operationally excellent systems that compound at 5 to 10% while competitors burn out chasing the 40% growth rates that no longer exist.  ▼  If you are still running your Amazon channel like it is 2019, you are competing in a market that no longer exists.  The mature phase rewards execution, not experiments.  Full Article: https://lnkd.in/e9JBxnRY

We’ve officially hit a new milestone in US retail. E-commerce now accounts for a record 16.6% of total retail sales. To put that into perspective: nearly $1 out of every $6 spent in the US is now happening online The velocity of this shift is what’s truly amazing when you look at the long game: - The 25-Year Surge: In Q1 2000, e-commerce was a rounding error at just 0.8%. We’ve seen activity surge by over 20x since the turn of the millennium. - A Trillion-Dollar Benchmark: Total US e-commerce sales for 2025 reached an estimated $1.23 trillion, marking a +5.4% increase over 2024. - The Q4 Peak: The year ended with a massive sprint, as Q4 2025 online sales surged to a record $365.2 billion. What does this tell us? Online shopping isn't just "growing", it’s fundamentally restructuring the retail landscape. We are no longer talking about a digital alternative; we are looking at the primary engine of retail growth. While the headline is often "Online vs. Brick-and-Mortar," the real story is about how traditional retail must evolve to survive a trillion-dollar digital reality. #Ecommerce #RetailTrends