#MYCYBERSALE 2017 hits RM311mil gross merchandise value

• Number of exporting merchants doubled to 497 this year, compared with 260 in 2016
• About RM39 million of the RM311 million GMV was derived from international shoppers

MALAYSIA’S biggest online sale event, #MYCYBERSALE 2017, achieved a gross merchandise value (GMV) of RM311 million – exceeding the RM300 million target set for 2017.

GMV is defined as total revenue generated during the five-day sales period before taking into account discounts.

About RM39 million of the RM311 million GMV was derived from international shoppers, surpassing the export revenue target of RM20 million.

This equates to growth of 254% from the 2016 export revenue of RM11 million.

Other records set were the doubling of the number of exporting merchants to 497 this year, compared with just 260 in 2016.

In total, more than 1,007 online merchants participated in #MYCYBERSALE 2017 across 22 retail categories as compared with just 607 in the previous year.

There were 26 exporting countries this year, nearly three times more from last year. The new exporting countries this year included Japan and India from Asia; Austria and Poland from Europe; Turkey and Greece from the Mediterranean region and Denmark and Sweden from the Scandinavian region.

About 10% of this year’s merchants were micro-enterprises under MDEC’s e-usahawan initiative.

The performance of this year’s online sale event is in line with its theme “Catalysing Micro Enterprises and Global Trade”. 

“This year’s GMV results are good news for the growth of e-commerce in Malaysia. It shows that Malaysians are continuing to embrace the online shopping culture as long as there are a variety of products offered at good discounts,” said Ganesh Kumar Bangah, chairman of e-Commerce Malaysia, a chapter of Pikom.

“The outstanding export revenue growth shows that Malaysian online merchants, especially SMEs have great potential to reach out to their customers beyond borders,” he added.

Ganesh added that the recently launched Digital Free Trade Zone augurs well with Pikom’s own efforts to promote e-commerce and help SMEs to expand their businesses abroad.

DFTZ, Alibaba’s first e-fulfilment hub outside China, aims to be a key driver of the Digital Economy in Malaysia with lower trade barriers and more equitable access to markets for SMEs around the world.

MDEC chief executive officer Yasmin Mahmood said the performance of this year’s #MYCYBERSALE is quite remarkable considering that 2017 marked the transition of the event moving towards becoming a private-sector-led initiative.

“We are delighted with the results achieved, especially with the strong sales from the international consumers. The achievement of all targets proves that #MYCYBERSALE has been successfully handed over to the private sector.

“MDEC is confident that Pikom will be able to continue to achieve more success in attracting more private investments and more online merchants in future editions of #MYCYBERSALE,” said Yasmin.

This year’s #MYCYBERSALE, now in its fourth consecutive year, was organised by Pikom (The National ICT Association of Malaysia) in collaboration with MDEC, which ran the 2014, 2015 and 2016 editions.

#MYCYBERSALE 2017 also saw an encouraging private sector partnership with the inaugural inclusion of Pinnacle Partners, Commerce.Asia, Lazada and MasterCard.

The other #MYCYBERSALE 2017’s merchants and service partners included Fusionex, iPay88, Skynet, SF Express, LWE, Involve Asia, Shippop, Exabytes Asia, Akamai, 11street and eGentic (Premier Partners); Shopee, (Gold Partner); Aramex, eGHL and Payoneer (Silver Partners); Maybank, TM, Celcom and Malaysia Airlines.

Over 40% of #MYCYBERSALE 2017 was funded by the private sector.