Why India doesn’t make sense for Shopee

Why read this story?

Editor's note: In a rather surprising move, Singaporean e-commerce firm Shopee announced yesterday that it is exiting India. The company, owned by Singapore-headquartered and New York-listed consumer internet giant Sea Ltd, had only been operating here for about six months and was doing rather well. From Shopee’s statement, via TechCrunch : In view of global market uncertainties, we have decided to close our early-stage Shopee India initiative. During this period of transition, we will focus on supporting our local seller and buyer communities and our local team to make the process as smooth as possible. We will continue to focus our efforts on delivering a positive impact to our global communities, in line with our mission to better the lives of the underserved through technology. • In the past 18 hours or so, there have been a host of different reactions to the exit. There is concern among those who are quite possibly going to lose their jobs because of this exit; the number will run into a couple of hundreds at the very least. There is a celebration at the Confederation …