Bom Kim is a Korean-American Billionaire businessman who founded Korea's largest e-commerce company, Coupang. With Coupang valued at $9 billion in 2018, Kim has become the 2nd youngest billionaire in Korea at the age of…
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Coupang, the NASDAQ-listed e-commerce company from South Korea, is actively recruiting talents in Singapore. This is a clear sign that the firm is expanding to Singapore or even the Southeast Asia region.
At the time of writing, there are 12 Singapore-based job opportunities posted on Coupang’s career page. The openings in Singapore range from Business Analyst, Data Scientist, Web Engineer, UX designer, QA engineer, to more senior positions like Head of Logistics, Head of Operations, and Head of Retail.
If you haven’t heard of Coupang, read this biography of Bon Kim – the founder of Coupang.
While Singapore is a small market with only close to 6 million population, this can be Coupang’s first move to the Southeast Asia.
With Coupang’s B2C model of handling the logistics similar to Amazon’s, Singapore is probably the best market for Coupang to set up warehouses and roll out its iconic Rocket Delivery, or even dawn delivery services.
If you don’t already know, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) is one of the investors of Coupang since 2014. It is rumored that SPH will inject another round of funding into Coupang.
It will not be a surprise if Coupang expand its territories to Malaysia and other parts of Southeast Asia after setting up base in Singapore.
According to the e-Conomy SEA report, the total e-commerce transactions in Southeast Asia is expected to increase from 62 billion in 2020 to 172 billion in 2025.
Even with the big market opportunities as a whole, Southeast Asia is a fragmented region with 11 countries, diversities in terms of language, culture, etc.
With market leaders such as Shopee, Lazada and local champions like Tokopedia in Indonesia, it will not be an easy mission for Coupang to penetrate e-commerce markets in Southeast Asia.
Having gone IPO earlier this year, perhaps Coupang needs to sell the global dream to the investors, instead of being just a local champion.
