Shopee Decided To Quit Its Operations In India Immediately

Recently, on March 28th, 2022, Singapore’s e-commerce giant, Sea Ltd-owned Shopee, has announced its unprecedented exit from India, according to some known sources.

Shopee is a visionary e-commerce site, specifically built keeping in mind the Asian market, which is why it is widely popular across Taiwan and South Korea. It offers simple, quick, and assured solutions to its customers. With the Shopee’s entry in India, e-commerce market became competitive. It also gave various small business owners a global platform to expand their business without much capital investment. It had launched a branch in India just about six months back in view of its global expansion plans.

The news comes not so long after the Indian Government decided to declare the gaming app Garena Free Fire, interestingly owned by Sea Ltd. Apart from that, Shopee had come under fire for apparently not complying with India’s FDI guidelines. 

Shopee’s official statement indicates that its decision to shut down the company, which was still in its infancy stage, was made keeping in mind the current uncertainties in the global market. This site had provided not only a bridge between sellers of all kinds and potential buyers but also no commission fee and free shipping. This gave a huge boost to small business owners, especially as they no longer needed to invest humongous capital to grow their business.

As for the employees, their employee access has been suspended along with the services too. 

It is speculated that Shopee may offer willing Indian employees internal opportunities in Sea itself. However, the vendors have to quit the platform right away, but the pending payments, returns, and refunds services will be valid till May 30th.

The aftermath that followed the decision was quick as Sea’s market value plunged down by nearly 6% at $116.12 per share on the New York Stock Exchange, and some major company investors pulled out their holdings, fearing huge losses.

Shopee’s major competitors seem to now have a wider market reach because of the surprising exit of Shopee from India’s market. Meesho, an established e-commerce company with Facebook’s backing, seems to make plans for surging growth and deeper penetration in the Indian market. It has started further recruitment of employees to boost their development.