2023 – a time of living dangerously for region’s tech players ?  

2022 was not a good year for the tech sector across the globe. After two years of growth during the Covid-19 pandemic, 2022 saw valuations crash and employees get laid off. In Southeast Asia, the story was much the same. The two most prominent examples are Sea Limited, which ended 2022 around 80 per cent down from its peak a year earlier, and with 10 per cent of its staff seeking other opportunities, and GoTo, which ended the year some 70 per cent down from its April IPO, and having shed 12 per cent of its workforce. The year ahead for technopreneurs in Southeast Asia looks to be one of pivoting, consolidation, and, for some, survival until better days.

The fundamentals for this region have not changed: a large, diverse, and young population driving one of the fastest economic growth paces in the world. Indeed, even though the Asian Development Bank recently revised Southeast Asia’s 2023 growth forecast down from 4.9 per cent to 4.6 per cent, this compares favourably to East Asia’s projected growth of just 2.4 per cent.

The economies of Southeast Asia have huge potential for growth of the digital economy and the rise of middle-class consumers. A report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company, e-Conomy SEA 2022, put the gross merchandise value of the region’s e-commerce sector at around US$200 billion in 2022, an increase of 20 per cent from the previous year. The region also added 20 million more Internet users, to reach 460 million.