Soure: Google

Profitability on the rise

In an annual study by Google, Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings and U.S. consultancy Bain & Co., the region's e-commerce, online travel, on-demand transportation and food delivery and other related services are expected to generate a total EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $11 billion in 2024, up from $9 billion last year and $4 billion in 2022.

The e-Conomy SEA 2024 report estimated the EBITDA figures of leading tech companies from each sector and used that as a base to project the numbers for other smaller companies. The annual study tracks digital economy trends in six regional markets: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam.

Profitability on the rise across sectors: Tighter commissions, targeted incentives, and new revenue streams like advertising have contributed to profit multiplying by a 2.5x increase in profit over the past two years.

Strides in e-commerce and gaming

Creators in Southeast Asia have helped drive e-commerce growth significantly through their use of live shopping. In fact, video commerce in the region accounts for 20% of the total e-commerce GMV — which has itself grown 15% since last year. And when it comes to gaming, Southeast Asia’s developers are driving an outsized share of the global gaming market with 12%1 of all global mobile game downloads in 2024.

Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI)

Southeast Asia is also attracting significant investments in AI, with the first half of 2024 alone bringing in over U.S. $30 billion committed to AI infrastructure in Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. This influx of capital is laying the foundation for more compute power, AI services and the capacity to handle ever growing amounts of data, positioning the region for long-term success.