Amongst the explosive rise of e-commerce in Southeast Asia, one company is hoping to make its mark by making it easier for brands to sell their products online.

Anchanto, which is 70% owned by Singapore-based shareholders and 30% by Japanese shareholders, started out primarily as a logistics company in 2011 but now considers itself an e-commerce technology company.

“We were using our own technology and realized a lot of other logistics companies were interested in it,” says Moritz Heininger, COO of Anchanto. “We turned to focusing on the tech product and improving it, which is what we think we do best.”

Headquartered in Singapore with wholly owned subsidiaries consisting mainly of development teams in Kuala Lumpur and Pune, India, Anchanto aims to connect and integrate different players across the e-commerce industry, including brands, sellers, official online stores of brands, online marketplaces, retail stores and logistics companies.

To that end, the company offers two products and two services. The newest product, called SelluSeller, is a tool that lets a brand sell its products across different marketplaces. According to Heininger, Anchanto has been using it internally for about two years and it is now undergoing beta testing, with a full roll out scheduled for January 2017 in Singapore, India and Indonesia.

“Usually, a brand would prefer to put a product on online marketplaces like Lazada because hardly anyone buys from official websites,” Heininger says. “The brand can open a web shop in each of the main marketplaces and then update each of them as orders come in, cross checking the inventory. But with our tool, a brand can put all the product information into the system, push one button and synchronize across all the marketplaces. So we’re the middleman making it easier for brands to sell online.”

He adds that Anchanto has already secured brands such as L’Oréal, Orbis and 3M, and is planning to extend the tool to Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam in March or April 2017.

Another change to SelluSeller being considered is to make it free if a brand works together with one of Anchanto’s associated logistics companies.

“Doing that would incentivize the brand or distributor to outsource their logistics, which then makes SelluSeller a business development tool for the 3PL,” says Heininger. “The seller would also be happy because they wouldn’t have to pay for the tool and they have a working logistics solution.”

The company’s second product is a warehouse management system, which it calls Fulfillment by Anchanto.

“This is a cloud-based system that logistics companies, courier companies and last-mile-delivery companies can use, connecting them with online marketplaces so that instead of running their old server-based systems, we allow them to get those online orders directly,” says Heininger. “The moment someone places an order online, it goes right to the third-party warehouse and then goes through the typical process, all the way to the last-mile solution. The delivery status is then updated across all those marketplaces.”

The system has already been chosen by courier customers such as Indonesian Post and DTDC India, as well as BGroup, which specializes in fashion logistics.

Anchanto also provides global fulfillment and cross-border e-commerce services, which Heininger says are possible even though the company no longer has its own warehouse as of November 2016.

“We’re an asset-light enabler,” he says. “We make it very easy for brands to sell online and be an e-commerce player. We also help logistics companies enter the e-commerce market because we have thousands of sellers on our software and we can connect the two sides.”

The focus of the company is very much on Asia, particularly Southeast Asia. Heininger admits that Anchanto is not planning to move too much into the Chinese market because the company is too small compared to Cainiao, the tech-based logistics platform which is partly owned by Alibaba.

“We’re too late for China,” he says. “We partner with companies and try to get something out of China, but we can’t make inroads and sell our e-commerce warehouse management system there now. However, we’re not too late for India. India is maybe 10 years behind China and it’s a huge market. We also know India. Half of our company is Indian and our founder is Indian. We’re already fully integrated with all the marketplaces in India and even get funding from the marketplaces and the largest courier company there.”

Heininger is also optimistic about Indonesia, which, according to a study by Google and Singaporean state-owned investment company Temasek, will account for 52% of all e-commerce activity in Southeast Asia by 2025.

“It’s the largest e-commerce market in Southeast Asia,” Heininger says. “But it’s very fragmented and they really do have a need for integration of partners. We’re bullish, particularly in the first six months, because we’ll have the first-mover advantage.”

But one major challenge with many markets across Southeast Asia is customs clearance.

“Singapore is amazing because everything is automated and all the data is processed within a couple of hours,” says Heininger. “The other extreme is the Philippines, where we really need to find the right partner because we don’t want to break any laws and yet we do want to get things cleared fast. The difficulty there is finding a partner who has the right connections and the right experience to do everything for you while adhering to the tight standards.”

Setting up new lanes for customers can present another challenge for Heininger.

“For example, we work closely with Lazada and send Japanese products to all the various Lazada countries,” he says. “To set up this Japan-Southeast Asia lane, we had to find and integrate all the right partners and make everything full automated. The good thing is that it’s a one-time upfront investment. Once the lane is up and running we can use it not just for Lazada, but for everyone else.”

In the short term, Heininger and his team will focus on developing SelluSeller and rolling it out country by country in the next couple of years. Meanwhile, they also hope to connect more and more online marketplaces as this mode of shopping becomes more and more prevalent.

“I think the cross-border e-commerce market will grow a lot, driven by that fact that it’s increasingly easy for people to get online, as well as by simplified customs processes,” Heininger says. “And because cross-border will grow even more, we will reap the benefits because we connect all the different players in different countries.”

By Jeffrey Lee

Asia Cargo News | Hong Kong