Who owns Shopee, the eCommerce giant in Southeast Asia?

Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —

Online shopping platform A shopkeeper popular in various countries, including Indonesia. However, not many people know who owns this e-commerce giant.

In fact, Shopee dominates the Southeast Asian market. It is no surprise that Shopee is making a huge profit.

The marketplace is consistently the most visited e-commerce site in five of six Southeast Asian countries, namely Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. Total visit will reach 235.9 million visitors in early 2024.

Shopee’s success cannot be separated from its owner and founder, Forrest Li. His name is certainly familiar to digital businessmen around the world.

Shopee’s development in Southeast Asia has made Forrest Li the second richest person in Singapore. He was also the richest man in the country

According to various sources, Forrest Xiaodong Li was born in Tianjin, China in 1977/1978. Both his parents worked as employees in state-owned companies.

He was born and raised in the Chinese port city of Tianjin to parents who spent their entire careers in state-owned companies.

Li studied engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He then worked as a recruiter for Motorola and Corning in Shanghai for four years.

His first step in making changes in his life was being admitted to Stanford, where he met his future wife, Ma Liqian.

In 2005, Li attended Ma’s graduation where Steve Jobs delivered his famous speech, “You have to find what you love.” Jobs’ words then inspired Li to pursue his passion in online games.

After moving to Singapore, he launched a gaming company called GG Game in that country. But the start failed.

Never one to give up, Li then launched Garena, an online gaming platform, in 2009 with two friends, David Chen and Gang Ye – all three are now naturalized citizens of Singapore originally from mainland China.

Garena then became the forerunner of the Marine Corps. Li’s company continued to grow until in 2014 he launched AirPay which became the digital financial service SeaMoney.

A year later, in 2015 to be precise, Li launched the online shopping or e-commerce platform Shopee with Chen and Ye. This application became one of the most downloaded markets in Southeast Asia.

In 2017 before the IPO, Li changed the name of his company to Sea. The name refers to South East Asia as the company’s main market.

Sea raised US$884 million or the equivalent of IDR 13.61 trillion (assuming an exchange rate of IDR 15,491 per US dollar) in an offer that valued the company at more than US$4 billion when the h -list their shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

Forbes real-time net worth report, Li’s wealth currently reaches US$ 5.2 billion or IDR 80.08 trillion.

This wealth has decreased compared to 2021 which reached US$ 12.4 billion. This is the impact of the drop in the price of SEA shares on the United States stock exchange, which lost the company’s market capitalization of US $ 1 trillion, which affected its wealth.

[Gambas:Video CNN]

(from/from)