Southeast Asia online economy reaches 50 billion dollars

The online economy is growing, and not just in the United States. South Asia is all about the e-commerce train, and the proof is in the pudding. Business of Fashion has reported that South Asia's internet economy, will reach 50 billion dollars this year. This puts it on trajectory to grow fourfold by 2025.

A large portion of Southeast Asia's economic growth was due to startup businesses developing there. As reported by Business of Fashion, of the 12 billion dollars of capital invested in Southeast Asian internet companies since 2016, 9 billion of those dollars were raised by startups with more than 1 billion dollar valuations.

The increase in the number of smartphone users has contributed to this growth. Southeast Asia is also expected to have 330 million internet users by the end of the year.

According to an article by Tech Crunch, Southeast Asia is now the world's largest region for internet users. Although online travel is still the largest segment for spending, but e-commerce and ride-sharing saw the highest growth this year.

According to a report by Tech Crunch, E-commerce, not including second-hand/consumer-to-consumer sales, grew at a compound annual rate of 41 percent to cross 10 billion dollars for the first time in 2017.

Southeast Asia has become the major global economy to watch, and international investors should take notice.