Startups can still play along e-commerce giants in SEA gold rush

Jakarta

WHEN Indonesian President Joko Widodo rose to address his Asean counterparts over the weekend in Singapore, he rolled out some eye watering numbers including a forecast that some US$90 billion worth of goods and services will be bought on the Internet by 2025 - a nine-fold increase from the amount today.

The trouble is - as the e-commerce's 800-pound gorillas like Alibaba Tencent and Amazon move in to carve up Asean's US$2.5 trillion economy, the region's start ups are increasingly shut out of what is still a booming market.