Southeast Asia’s $100 billion Internet Economy

e-Conomy SEA

e-Conomy SEA is a multi-year research program launched to shed light on the Internet economy in Southeast Asia.

It covers the six largest markets in the region: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The 2019 report covers five key sectors of the Internet economy: Online Travel (Flights, Hotels, Vacation Rentals); Online Media (Advertising, Gaming, Subscription Music and Video on Demand); Ride-Hailing (Transport, Food Delivery); e-Commerce; and a first in the series, Digital Financial Services (Payments, Remittance, Lending, Investment, Insurance).

The series kicked off in May 2016 with the inaugural “e-Conomy SEA - Unlocking the $200 billion digital opportunities in Southeast Asia”. In that report, we projected that the Southeast Asian Internet economy would grow to $200 billion by 2025, fueled by rapid growth in Online Travel, e-Commerce and Online Media.

We also looked at the funding pipeline and concluded that investors had ample reason to be excited about the region’s potential.

Since then, we have continued to track the growth of the Internet economy in the region closely, expanding our coverage to more sectors and charting their progress.

And we are constantly surprised by how fast the Internet economy is growing. In last year’s report, “e-Conomy SEA 2018 - Southeast Asia’s Internet economy hits an inflection point”, we noted that the economy had reached a turning point, which would see gears shift. Investors have been moving funds into the region since, resulting in billion-dollar investments into companies, talent, and infrastructure.

This year’s report, “e-Conomy SEA 2019 - Swipe up and to the right: Southeast Asia’s $100 billion Internet economy”, shows that the Internet economy has, for the first time, crossed the $100 billion mark.

The pace of growth has been unprecedented, leading to a revision of our own estimates.

This and previous reports would not have been possible without the assistance of industry experts who have contributed to the research. In particular, teams at Golden Gate Ventures, Monk’s Hill Ventures, Openspace, Vertex Ventures, Wavemaker and Jungle Ventures helped provide insights on venture capital investments in Southeast Asia.