Nunthapong Boonnao goes live on Facebook once every fortnight to share the product lineup of his Thailand-based women’s clothing label, Loonnystore. In one such session on 23 May, he and two other co-hosts went through 30-odd items in two-and-a-half hours. The live stream attracted over 40,000 views and more than 27,000 comments, many of them being people placing orders for the items displayed.
As live commerce boomed boomed The Ken How Zalora and Co can get SE Asia’s live commerce up to China’s highs Read more during the pandemic across Southeast Asia—it’s projected to be a US$19 billion industry by 2023, up from US$6 billion in 2020—managing live streams on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram also became increasingly chaotic. Sellers need to keep track of dozens of orders as they come in, apart from going back and forth with customers to close the transactions.
The chaos only increases as your business scales. And if it wasn’t for Shoplus, Boonnao wouldn’t have been able to keep track of every live-commerce order he received. Shoplus is a Taiwanese social commerce management service that Boonnao has been using since December 2019 for Loonnystore’s Facebook Live sessions.
Instead of manually scrolling through comments on the live streams to track orders, send bills, collect payments, and arrange shipping, Shoplus automates all of it using artificial intelligence. And in much less time. If catering to orders took half a day earlier, Boonnao doesn’t spend more than a few minutes on it today.
According to Shoplus’ website, it has helped Loonnystore book 20% more orders and increased its payment completion rate by 65% since coming on board. Shoplus’ parent company, iKala, raised a US$17 million Series B round in August 2020 to expand its presence in Southeast Asia. iKala declined to participate in the story.
Shoplus isn’t the only fish in the strait. Singapore-based Upmesh claimed that merchants saw a 30% increase in GMV GMV Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) Gross merchandise value is the total value of sales; commonly used in e-commerce. within a month, and a 3X growth in sales after nine months. The company raised a US$7.5 million seed round, led by Singapore-based venture capital firm Monk’s Hill Ventures, in December 2021.
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With management consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimating estimating McKinsey Digital It’s showtime! How live commerce is transforming the shopping experience Read more that live commerce will comprise 10-20% of all e-commerce sales by 2026, Southeast Asia’s biggest e-tailers have made a beeline for it.
