Shopee is on track to eclipse Alibaba’s entire international e-commerce business by 2022

Singaporean upstart is challenging Chinese giant abroad.

Shopee’s parent company, Sea Ltd, posted its quarterly results, retaining the triple digit pace of growth, with its revenue jumping by over 160 per cent year on year.

Meanwhile, its chief competitor, Chinese giant Alibaba, reported a strong but considerably smaller growth of 54 per cent for its international businesses combined — Aliexpress, Lazada, Trendyol and Daraz — earlier this month.

These four companies generated around US$1.6 billion in revenue for the quarter ending June 30, compared to Shopee’s US$1.2 billion. 

Alibaba does not provide a specific breakdown per business, but given Aliexpress’ global reach, it must mean that Lazada is already trailing Shopee badly in the region and the gap keeps growing all the time, as Singapore’s centicorn has managed to grow its e-commerce business nearly seven-fold since 2019.

Even more noteworthy, however, is the fact that at the current pace, Shopee is not only going to leave Lazada in the dust in SEA, but will eclipse Alibaba’s entire international e-commerce business, even though it is rooted in a single region (and merely just started venturing into Latin America).

And this may happen as soon as the first or second quarter of 2022.