Trade body seeks curb on Singapore e-tailer Shopee

CAIT chairman Praveen Khandelwal said that SEA Holdings, the holding company of Shopee, has significant ownership (almost 25%) by Tencent, a known Chinese investment firm.

BENGALURU:  The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Thursday, wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and sought his intervention in curbing the entry of south-east Asia’s e-tailer Shopee into the Indian market.

CAIT chairman Praveen Khandelwal said that SEA Holdings (the holding company of Shopee) has significant ownership (almost 25%) by Tencent (a known Chinese investment firm). Also, the founder of SEA, Forrest Li, is originally Chinese, but became a naturalised Singaporean only a few years back. 

“SEA uses Tencent cloud to store data. Also, SEA’s gaming subsidiary, Garena, licences most games from Tencent leading to huge royalties and the investment ensures that there is significant control and access to data,” he added.

Shoppe, which is a subsidiary of Singapore listed multinational SEA, is expanding its global footprints since the onset of the pandemic with India in focus. Shopee, as per sources, has started recruiting for important roles in India. 

The $172-bllion company, as per its official posts on Linkedin, is actively hiring for roles such as business development, payments and seller operations. “They are still a small team in India but will be launching soon here apart from Europe,” sources privy to the matter said.

Shopee, as per sources, is planning to onboard sellers in India at discounted commission rates, free delivery charges etc. Shopee has planned its global expansion after reporting $1.2 billion revenue for the June quarter, up by 160% YoY and with its earnings before tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) zooming to $579.8 million. The Singapore firm said during its last quarterly results report that in markets like India, its mobile game, Free Fire, continues to be the highest grossing game, referring to a recent report by research firm, App Annie.

China’s Tencent has 25% stake

CAIT chairman Praveen Khandelwal said that SEA Holdings, the holding company of Shopee, has significant ownership (almost 25%) by Tencent, a known Chinese investment firm.

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