In 2021, Indonesia’s ecommerce market took the 9th top spot for having recorded ecommerce revenue of US$43.4 billion during the year; placed ahead of Canada. Ranked immedately next to India, the 32% increase contributed to the 15% global growth of ecommerce in year 2021.
As the Southeast Asian countries saw growth in their middles class populations, the country’s timely improvements in infrastructure likewise spurred increases in internet usage. Actually, the growth in ecommerce markets had propelled during the pandemic; but is currently on a continuing trend that is expected to extend over the next years.
Statista’s forecast of Indonesia’s ecommerce market revenue for 2022 is at US$43.4 billion. The way things are looking up in Indonesia, eCommerce market revenues are projected to grow annually at a rate of 12.95% between 2022 and 2025.
Indonesia’s Food and Drink ECommerce Surges On, Even After the Pandemic
Indonesia’s e-grocery market has actually been seeing expansion even before the COVID-19 health crisis. The pandemic simply doubled the increase in demand when compared growth of e-grocery sales in 2019. That being the case, manufacturing firms expanded the coverage of their productions in order to extend the reach of their products in other regions.
The marked shift to purchasing groceries online has been taking place in ecommerce platforms like Shopee and Takopedia, as the two have been taking on the most number of online grocery orders for food and drinks. Apparently, as Indonesians have developed a great deal of trust on these websites, it was easy for the two ecommerce platforms to offer their delivery services across new territories.
In 2020, Indonesia’s trade ministry made business registrations easier and faster to accomplish. Through the Online Single Submission (OSS), owners of SMEs looking to venture into ecommerce businesses including food services, can apply without need to pay for fees.
At the height of the health crisis, the lockdown and mandatory social distancing orders caused the demand for food delivery service to surge. Indonesia’s popular fastfood chains initially met the demand. Yet apprehensions for food safety and quality saw most Indonesian households shifting to home cooking. Popular Indonesian restaurants like Bakmi GM, Coco Ichibanya, Hoka-Hoka Bento and Yoshinoya strategized by offering frozen versions of their popular menu item.
Web-Based Entertainment, WFH and Online Classes Intensified Digital Adoption Across Indonesia
Most of Indonesia’s younger generations stayed at home to continue studies by way of online classes; whilst recreating by playing with multi-player online video games. The adoption of digital communication platforms to carry on with work-from-home arrangements, business transactions and various forms of social interactions, all the more gave rise to the increased demand for online food and beverage services — not only in households but in business places as well.
As innovations in digital products and platforms became necessary the prolonged health crisis gave rise to more adoptions of ecommerce platforms. Such developments continued beyond the pandemic period, which encouraged local distributor Logitech, Aver and Poly to intensify their push to become active players in Indonesian ecommerce market.
While Logitech is recognized as among the early adopters of ecommerce in Indonesia, other tech companies like Aver and Poly quickly followed suit. After all, Aver Information provides education and business solutions via video and audio conferencing tools not only in the form of visualizers but also charging and synchronization carts. Poly on the other hand, which emerged as a result of the merger between Plantronics and Polycom remains focused on creating excellently engineered audio and video equipment. The company makes sure participants can be seen and heard with absolute clarity regardless of location.
Fintechs and ecommerce experts in Indonesia believe that the uptrend in ecommerce growth in the country will continue in the coming years. Mainly because the Indonesian government’s initiatives are seeing improvements in logistics and payment nfrastructures, which all the more elicit favorable ecommerce consumer behavior.