2023 is the Year of the Rabbit and the Year of the Rebound for Asian economies. This outlook is expressed by many economic commentators, and their optimism is based on diverse factors including the projected growth rates for digital economies in the region.
According to Google, Temasek, and Bain Capital, Southeast Asia’s digital economy, for example, is tipped to exceed USD300B by 2025, powered by growth in E-Commerce that surged during the height of the pandemic.
Between now and 2026, the Southeast Asian market is projected to triple at a compound growth rate of 22 percent and reach around $230 billion in gross merchandise volume as customers diversify their online purchases.
Fertile ground for startups and E-Commerce
This growth momentum provides fertile ground for startups in Southeast Asia. IDC, for instance, is equally bullish about digital in 2023. IDC forecasts that one in three Southeast Asian companies will generate more than 15% of their revenue from digital products and services.
This is compared to one in six in 2020, attributing the improvement to accelerated digital services, autonomous operations, omni-experiences, supply chain modernization, and data-driven decision-making.
Great opportunities, great challenges
While Southeast Asia’s digital sector has the wind in its sails, businesses and startups must stay nimble and ready to provide user-friendly, secured, real-time applications with next-generation features because digital customers are more discerning, sophisticated, and demanding today.
Research published by McKinsey, reveals that while customer satisfaction has increased in Asia, 25% of people surveyed cited ‘information not updated’ and ‘Bad UI/UX’ as major frustrations.
Stepping up to the cloud
Startups and E-companies can’t rest on their laurels, and many have embraced cloud solutions to enhance flexibility and agility. Today’s cloud environment offers security, stability, scalability, ease of development benefits, and cost advantages thanks to critical mass.
Added together, these positives allow Asian startups to ramp up their application stacks faster. Cloud databases, especially those that can be delivered through the ‘as-a-service’ model, have become a must-have addition to the modern-day application stack.
Distributed, horizontally scalable NoSQL databases that can increase or decrease in performance on-demand while staying affordable, offer a valuable competitive edge.
Simply put, a business equipped to harness and mobilise data in real time, will be able to anticipate customer needs and meet them with the right performance, user interface and experience. Ultimately, this will be decisive in driving continued success.
Cloud x-factor
Using the cloud, businesses of all sizes can quickly build smart, scalable applications according to needs, while also reducing operational costs. For example, an open-source multi-cloud application architecture can be deployed in a “serverless” model, without having to provision for the peak, and can scale up and down on demand.
This reduces costs and time-to-readiness to a fraction of what was possible in the past. Modern cloud-native development also delivers faster time-to-market and better quality, reliable applications (wrapped in a tighter feedback loop) to enable quality, more frequent improvements.
Cutting clutter and better managing applications in an increasingly complex market is a pressing need for startups, as is simplifying systems and platforms to enable development teams to build applications with an accelerated path to production.
Exposing data infrastructure via secure, modern, scalable APIs reduces the complexities and shortcomings of information silos, while also allowing app developers to focus on writing business services – leveraging federated data repositories – rather than learning intricate query language.
The right NoSQL backend should support any data model and integrate with diverse business cases – Customer 360 platforms, fraud detection, Internet of Things applications and devices, e-commerce platforms, gaming, financial services, and even supply chain and logistics applications.
A unified and federated data platform allows an organization to take its applications to the next level. They will also enjoy ‘peace of mind’ in the event of a disaster or human error, thanks to a cloud backup system that eliminates data loss risk without having to manage the complexity or the cost of implementing systems.
Implementing a “right fit” cloud solution should be a top priority because Asian consumers are more discerning, and demanding today, and if startups can’t meet, or exceed their expectations they will soon find a platform that does.
As the saying goes, “success leaves clues.” Success also never sleeps, and if you plan to upgrade your tech stack, do it now rather than later because the Asian digital wave is building momentum every day, offering new opportunities and possibilities like never before.
