ACommerce, an e-commerce enabler in Southeast Asia, aims to place an IPO on either the Singapore Exchange or the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) in 2020 in order to strengthen the brand.
The company has ambitions to become the largest e-commerce platform powered by automation and artificial intelligence.
ACommerce will announce which bourse it will list on next year.
An IPO would also enable the firm to support local brands that want to export products overseas before the market is dominated by giant players, particularly China's gigantic platforms.
"Thailand's e-commerce sales are expected to account for 8-10% of total retail market in 2019, up from 5% this year," said Paul Srivorakul, group chief executive and co-founder of aCommerce.
He said stiff competition in e-marketplaces and the move that many sellers are making to online platforms will stimulate not only business-to-consumer (B2C), but also business-to-business (B2B).
ACommerce started business in 2013 and has since expanded to five countries: Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia.
Mr Paul said aCommerce's business focuses on B2B, which is different from B2C in that it needs huge investment to attract mass customers.
Raising funds through an IPO will enable the firm's expansion to cover more of Southeast Asia.
Mr Paul said that once the IPO is issued successfully, aCommerce could be the first Thai startup to be a unicorn company, valued at over US$1 billion (32.8 billion baht), some time in 2021.
Becoming a listed firm will also offer a chance for aCommerce to expand further in the form of mergers and acquisitions.
The company did not give details of how much funding the IPO will mobilise.
One of the objectives, however, is to use the new capital to fund expansion into Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos.
Moreover, Mr Paul said online cross-border trade, particularly with China, has been overtaking companies in Thailand and Southeast Asia, making it difficult for local products to compete, as Chinese goods are cheaper and delivered in just 3-5 days.
To compete with China, local brands need to enlarge their business scale and exports, he said. Just 1% of local online sellers do exports.
Mr Paul said that some of aCommerce's competitors, such as China's Baozun, a Singapore Exchange-listed startup, and SingPost, are trying to expand into the region and the company must brace for newcomers.
ACommerce plans to invest more in technology, increasing from 40% of revenue, to make the business more automated and form an intelligent online platform.
Mr Paul did not say what the heightened proportion would be.
The company will partner with brands to gather data across all online and offline channels to analyse shopping behaviour. By 2020, the hope is that the data algorithm will be able to predict which products will be popular.
Data analytics fees will be another source of revenue for aCommerce, on top of revenue from turnkey e-commerce services and sales commissions.
"Southeast Asian countries are unique and diverse, so we believe local startups like us can win over the region, similar to how Grab beat Uber in the region," Mr Paul said.
The Thai operation will show profits this year, a first among all five operations, while Indonesia is expected to make profits next year.
Mr Paul hopes all operations will be profitable after the IPO.
Over the past five years, the company shipped more than 13.2 million orders from over 260 customer brands.
ACommerce is a Bangkok-based startup that received $65 million from Series B funding in 2017.
.png?w=600)
