{"id":20402,"date":"2015-10-09T03:37:56","date_gmt":"2015-10-08T19:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=20402"},"modified":"2015-10-09T03:37:56","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T19:37:56","slug":"itruemart-com-online-shopping-site-to-open-in-phl-in-november","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2015\/10\/09\/itruemart-com-online-shopping-site-to-open-in-phl-in-november\/","title":{"rendered":"itruemart.com online shopping site to open in Phl in November"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA \u2013 At the AWS re:Invent 2015, Thailand-based Ascend Group announced the scheduled opening of its online shopping site \u2013 itruemart.com \u2013 in the Philippines by November. When operations start, the Philippines will become the first country to have the e-commerce site outside of Thailand.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"iTrueMart\"<\/a><\/p>\n

According to Chaiwat Ratanaprateepporn, chief technology officer of Ascend Group, \u201cwe see it as a mission to help develop digital economy.\u201d As such, \u201cwe hope to introduce shopping options to people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u201cCompetition<\/a>

\u201cCompetition is there, obviously. It\u2019s a very competitive market,\u201d said Chaiwat Ratanaprateepporn, chief technology officer of Ascend Group. However, \u201cwe aim to just serve to encourage more and more people to go online when shopping. That way, we just focus on customer satisfaction.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Aside from the online store, Ascend Group will also open a warehouse, as well as an office for operations (in still undisclosed locations) in the Philippines.\u00a0Ratanaprateepporn is unable to disclose the total amount of investment to be made for the entry into the Philippines.<\/p>\n

Thailand is one of the countries in Asia and the Pacific that is growing fast in e-shopping\/e-commerce; and itruemart.com is one of the top three companies in the e-commerce space (related to transactions).<\/p>\n

Ratanaprateepporn said that they hope to mimic that success in another market \u2013 in this case, the Philippines.<\/p>\n

In its expansion to another market, Ascend Group is banking on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which it is \u201cnow using 100% now,\u201d said Ratanaprateepporn. In Ascend Group\u2019s case, AWS comes handy because \u201cof its speed, (responding to our need to be) quickly in the market; the technology that will help us develop; and savings, particularly in terms of efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the challenges we looked at when we went to cloud was because of expansion plans. In the past, to open in a new market, we would have to build data center, and this could take from four to six months. But with the cloud today, I could start (expanding) tomorrow,\u201d said Ratanaprateepporn.<\/p>\n

Ratanaprateepporn is cognizant of the presence \u2013 and even dominance \u2013 of other key players in online shopping in the Philippines, including of Lazada.com.ph, ZALORA.com.ph, CashCashPinoy.com. \u201cCompetition is there, obviously. It\u2019s a very competitive market,\u201d Ratanaprateepporn said. However, \u201cwe aim to just serve to encourage more and more people to go online when shopping. That way, we just focus on customer satisfaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ascend Group, a spin-off subsidiary of C.P. Group and True Corporation in Thailand, is a full eCommerce platform company providing services such as eCommerce web stores, marketplace and e-payment to business customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the AWS re:Invent 2015, Thailand-based Ascend Group announced the scheduled opening of its online shopping site \u2013 itruemart.com \u2013 in the Philippines by November. When operations start, the Philippines will become the first country to have the e-commerce site outside of Thailand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[3617,3616,3619,3618,746],"class_list":["post-20402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-ascend-group","tag-aws-reinvent-2015","tag-chaiwat-ratanaprateepporn","tag-itruemart-com","tag-online-shopping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}