In 2017, Sea went public on the New York Stock Exchange. After that, its stock price rose from $16 to $310, increasing 18 times. The market value of $170 billion surpassed Pinduoduo. Sea’s business model is more like a combination of Tencent + Pinduoduo + Ant Financial, mainly consisting of three major businesses including Garena (Game), Shopee (E-commerce), and SeaMoney (Payment). It also expanded its businesses to ShopeeFood (Takeout) and Sea Capital (Investment).
The infinite possibilities brought by Shopee are the foundation for investors’ recognition of Sea. There is even a saying that “80% of Sea’s stock price is supported by Shopee.”
A successful third-party e-commerce platform needs to connect a supply chain (including merchants, commodities, and logistics) and lots of customers that fit its market positioning, and at the same time enlarge the scale of the bilateral market to stimulate huge business energy.
The development path of third-party e-commerce platforms in Asia can be roughly divided into three models: the Easy mode in the early stage of Internet development, the Hard mode in the late stage of the e-commerce boom, and the intermediate mode in which competition has not yet heated up. The representative players of these three modes are Taobao, Pinduoduo, and Sea.