KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian e-commerce industry has grown steadily after its boom in the mid-2000s and is now a RM24.6bil business, said iPrice Group.

IPrice Group is a meta-search e-commerce website which enables Malaysian shoppers to connect with hundreds of e-commerce merchants and discover products, compare prices and get the best deals.

In a statement, iPrice said Lazada ranked as the top e-commerce company in Malaysia, followed by Zalora and 11 Street, based on their online traffic, staff numbers and followers on social media applications such as SimilarWeb, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

It said Lazada’s website received an average of 29 million visitors on a monthly basis while 11 Street received nine million visitors monthly.

“These three top e-commerce companies were all founded in South-East Asia.

“Although e-commerce websites originating from outside the South-East Asia region such as eBay and Sephora are also accessible to Malaysians, regional or locally based e-commerce sites seemed to be more successful, probably due to their on-the-ground knowledge which gives them a higher advantage,” it said.

Meanwhile, Lelong.com took the top spot in the list of Malaysian-based e-commerce companies, with its website recording an average traffic of 6.33 billion during the second quarter of 2017.

“Established in 1998, Lelong.com is probably the oldest Malaysian based e-commerce company and it remains the most popular commerce-to-commerce platform among Malaysians as they were among the first to spot the e-commerce potential,” it said.

IPrice also said that local fashion e-commerce websites, such as Fashion Valet and Poplook, were also gaining popularity among Malaysians.

“These local brands thrive mainly through social media pages such as Instagram, where they can easily feature their products via images and partnerships with popular local celebrities and brands,” it said.

It added that fashion brands in Malaysia had been seeing the benefit of adopting the e-commerce model in running their operations as it enabled them to scale their business efficiently according to consumers’ needs. - Bernama