It may be one of the earliest players in Singapore's e-commerce market, but Qoo10 seems to have lost some of its shine in recent years as more high-profile names such as Lazada, RedMart, Amazon, and Carousell hog the headlines.
Still, the e-commerce site has managed to climb to pole position in Singapore based on traffic and gross merchandise volume (GMV). Launched in June 2010, Qoo10 currently has 2.5 million registered users in the country where it is headquartered. There are more than 10 million product listings on the site.
According to online shopping aggregator iPrice[1], for the first quarter of 2018, Qoo10 clocked the highest monthly traffic in Singapore at 13.47 million visits, followed by Lazada at 10 million. In the previous quarter, Qoo10 saw 14.41 million monthly visits compared to Lazada's 10.87 million. The Alibaba-owned e-commerce site, however, led in ranking for both Apple App Store and Android Play Store, while Qoo10 placed third in both appstores.
Its general manager Sam Too acknowledged that Lazada was narrowing the gap and nipping at its heels. He noted, though, that the Singapore e-commerce market still was nascent and remained largely untapped.
Too said Qoo10 was "refocusing" on the city-state and tapping the market as a springboard into Southeast Asia, where it was targeting to be the region's second-largest player in the next three to five years.
He told ZDNet the company was planning for its Series C funding round this year and, if successful, would use the money to drive its expansion plans.
He said Qoo10 had spent the last five years focused on the Japanese market, which was its fastest growing and where the site rose to claim the fourth-largest share. In February, its