Expanding to Southeast Asia: A Vast Market Entry Opportunity

Kritika Sharma
4 min readMay 19, 2021

Not sure if you should go ahead with your business expansion in Singapore or any other Southeast Asian country?

Well, you’re at the right place. I’m going to clear all your doubts and reservations regarding expanding your business in the Southeast Asian markets.

Southeast Asia is definitely a strategic location to enter the foreign market, geographically speaking. Located in the middle of a dynamic Asia-Pacific region gives Southeast Asia-based companies the market advantage, especially if you’re planning to expand into countries like Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.

Key advantages of business expansion in Southeast Asian Market:

  1. The Southeast Asian market is an economic powerhouse with combined GDP valued at USD $3 trillion dollars, the 5th largest economy on the planet.
  2. There is a youthful workforce and customer base with a median age below 30 and a population approaching 700 million.
  3. There are approximately 1000 different languages spoken in Southeast Asia that add to its diversity.
  4. There is a vast talent market that businesses can leverage to realize their expansion goals.

Tips for expanding your business into the Southeast Asian Market

1. Southeast Asia is not a single market

You need to approach it as multiple markets which differ significantly based on language, technology maturity, culture, and spending power.

2. Be aware of the price variations

Different international locations may also have various degrees of rate sensitivity. Sometimes there’s a want to tweak worldwide pricing fashions as Southeast Asian locations have robust bargaining cultures.

3. Know the opportunities and the challenges

Southeast Asia is domestic to nearly 1/2 of the world’s population, seeing a marketable population of over six hundred million. So expanding your business in this region could be very fruitful for you.

Some of the commonplace region pain elements of advertising to this area include immigration policies, brand protection, close by and community regulations, as well as belongings registration.

4. You need to show commitment and physical presence

Buyers in Southeast Asia assume a neighborhood presence or at minimal a regionally installed partnership. It is obligatory to have a neighborhood distributor in many nations for a Request for Proposal (RFP).

5. Patience is a must to have

Plan for at the least years to create footprints as companies can be a chunk greater risk-averse on this COVID-19 climate. Actively teaching prospecting customers together along with your enterprise cost propositions and the ache factors that your enterprise can solve.

List of Southeast Asian countries to start business expansion:

1. Singapore

Placing first withinside the 2020 Global Expansion Tech Index, Singapore is the appropriate access factor into Asia with notable net connectivity and one of the fine public shipping infrastructures withinside the world.

The typically English-speaking state’s authorities nowadays started to court docket tech organizations via allowing its financial place more freedom to invest withinside the industry. This fine business enterprise surroundings, coupled with a brimming knowledge pool, make it the suitable operational base for extending the boom in Asia.

2. Vietnam

Vietnam emerged as a more and more famous worldwide growth vacation spot for organizations in quite a several industries. Studies indicate the United States made tremendous enhancements to net connectivity in current years which performs an important function withinside the United States’ pursuits to develop its IT offerings region.

This persevered virtual transformation and an increasingly efficient economy — a place of tremendous development on this year’s Global Expansion Tech Index — results in extreme hobby withinside the state from personal fairness buyers. This makes Vietnam a go-to place for brand spanking new tech organizations.

3. Thailand

2019 changed into officially the “Investment Year” in Thailand and new regulations designed to assist the United States’ home organizations prosper contributed to a sturdy uplift in inward investment, in line with certain studies.

Pleasant regulatory surroundings changed into Thailand’s maximum ranked characteristic withinside the index, recognizing the authorities’ efforts to streamline approaches and do away with pink tape. This substantially progressed how available the United States is to buyers and organizations alike.

There are several organizations that provide you with digital HR support for global expansion and hiring remote teams like Skuad, Velocity Global, ShieldGEO, Omnipresent, etc.

These organizations enable companies like yours to quickly and easily expand into more than 150 countries, including locations in Southeast Asia, without the hassle of setting up local branch offices.

You identify the talent, and they employ your team member via their in-country payroll, lifting the burden of figuring out HR, tax, and legal matters from your shoulders to theirs.

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