Sea to create 2,000 jobs in Malaysia in expansion push

Sea Ltd, the Singapore-based e-commerce giant and parent company of Shopee, has announced its plans to expand its investments in Malaysia. This new venture is expected to create over 2,000 job opportunities there.

Shopee is currently the largest pan-regional e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia and Taiwan.

Tengku Zafrul Aziz, Malaysia’s Minister of International Trade and Industry (MITI), also shared this very important development during his official visit to the company’s headquarters in Singapore last January 29.

Tengku Zafrul said that Sea’s decision to expand its investment footprint in Malaysia is a reflection of the company’s confidence in the prospects, as well as the operational and policy stability, of their country’s business landscape.

Gang Ye, Sea’s co-founder and group chief operating officer, said their expansion plans was a significant development not just for their group, but also for the local digital ecosystem.

He also expressed his gratitude for the support that they are getting from the MITI Minister and his team.

In a statement, Sea said that their expansion plans in Malaysia will include the need to set up of cloud computing services, data hosting and processing, and a new logistics e-commerce warehouse.

Sea’s cloud computing project will be located in a three-storey green facility in the Johor town in Kulai.

The facility that is targeted for completion by the first quarter of 2024, will house 24 data hall suites, mechanical and electrical rooms, office space, as well as storage and parking facilities.

In addition to this, Shopee is also set to expand its footprint in Malaysia with a newly-constructed two-storey mega warehouse – an integrated hi-tech logistics park equipped with cloud infrastructure spanning and area of 130,000 square meters in Bukit Raja, Klang.

“We are also expecting positive spillover effects for our small- and medium-size enterprises, corporates and the surrounding local communities. This includes local sourcing, vendor development and the strengthening of the local industrial ecosystem, particularly in the digital space,” said Tengku Zafrul.

The three-day investment mission to Singapore by Tengku Zafrul is in conjunction with the first official visit of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Monday.

During the visit, Ibrahim will be having one-on-one business meetings with the Yondr Group, a global leader in data centres and INSEACT, which is a Singapore-based alternative protein company which specialises in producing sustainable insect protein for aquaculture.

Earlier, Bloomberg reported that Sea founder Forrest Li announced in an internal memo that the company “needs to focus on profitability after a difficult 2022” while adding that the economy in 2023 “may prove to be even more challenging” amid the ongoing war in Ukraine and rising inflation rates.

With it, the company will have to halt the release of salary increases to employees who have not been promoted.

As of December 2022, Sea has also laid off more than 7,000 employees which represents about 10 percent of its workforce.