Amazon’s Prime Now Singapore launch sets stage for Alibaba turf war

Amazon’s Prime Now is now available in Singapore, offering its signature-free two-hour delivery. The launch is the e-commerce giant’s first foray into South East Asia, and it’s point of entry is significant.

Singapore is home-turf for Amazon’s major rival, Alibaba, which indirectly owns Redmart, Singapore’s largest online supermarket, through its Lazada subsidiary. This is the first time that the two have gone head-to-head in this sector in Asia.

Both major e-commerce companies face a highly segmented market as they blow through billions of dollars in the e-commerce arms race for a potential regional market of 600 million people that could reach US$70 billion in value.

Singapore is small, with excellent infrastructure – the per capita GDP is US$81,443 at purchasing power parity – so offering two-hour deliveries shouldn’t be a challenge. But expanding into less-developed countries like Vietnam could be more of a slog.

“We are pleased that Amazon has chosen to launch a new operating model with Amazon Prime Now in Singapore,” said Kiren Kumar, assistant managing director of the Singapore Economic Development Board. “With Prime Now, Amazon will also play a key role in training and equipping our local ecosystem and workforce with cross-disciplinary digital capabilities.”

Since launching in December 2014 in New York, Prime Now has expanded to more than 50 cities in nine countries.

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