00:00This is the story of Shopee. It was the year 2015 and Southeast Asia was changing. The region had
00:07over 600 million people who were getting access to smartphones for the first time. There were a lot
00:13of opportunities in this market and one of them was online shopping. The problem was that there
00:19wasn't a single online marketplace that served the entire region. There were many marketplaces
00:26that served individual countries like Indonesia, but none that served the entire area at once.
00:33This is when a young CEO named Forrest Lee set out to change everything. The new platform would be
00:41called Shopee. It would be an online marketplace connecting buyers and sellers from all over the
00:47world. The plan was to expand throughout Southeast Asia and become the Amazon of the East. But unlike
00:55Amazon, which focused on everything, Shopee would focus specifically on mobile commerce.
01:01They wanted to make it easier than ever for people to buy things with their phones. The company was
01:07launched in June of 2015 and it didn't take long for it to gain traction. In under two years,
01:14Shopee became the largest e-commerce platform in Indonesia. In 2017, they raised $1 billion in funding
01:22and in 2018, they were valued at $5.7 billion. Their rapid success can be attributed to a number
01:31of factors. First, they offered a very competitive product. By aggregating millions of products from all
01:38over the world into one place, they gave customers the best selection possible. On top of that,
01:45they had plenty of room to grow.
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