<article>As the e-commerce and fintech sectors in Southeast Asia flourish, other emerging themes that <a href="http://500.co/" target="_blank">500 Startups</a> has identified in the region are peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, payment solutions, enterprise services, mobile revolution and media, managing partner Khailee Ng says.
These five areas, Ng believes, could produce the next startup unicorns, seeing that other markets like the US and China are leading the trend.</article>

As the e-commerce and fintech sectors in Southeast Asia flourish, other emerging themes that <a href="http://500.co/" target="_blank">500 Startups</a> has identified in the region are peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, payment solutions, enterprise services, mobile revolution and media, managing partner Khailee Ng says.
These five areas, Ng believes, could produce the next startup unicorns, seeing that other markets like the US and China are leading the trend.
The term unicorn is used by venture capitalists to denote startups whose valuation has exceeded the $1-billion mark.
&#8220;P2P lending means going onto a website to fund someone else&#8217;s loan. P2P is used to fund small businesses, people who want to settle their credit card debt, those who want to buy a property or even people planning their wedding,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;Think of it like crowdfunding but it&#8217;s crowd-loaning.&#8221;
Speaking at Catcha Group&#8217;s Wild Digital conference, Ng noted that while there are many global references of billion-dollar P2P lending companies especially in China and the US, the SEA region was not as easy to tread given the legal considerations and cultural differences.
&#8220;I looked at a lot of deals in SEA and every country is different in terms of legality, but what makes the US a good place for P2P lending is the high credit card debt which people get P2P loans to pay off,&#8221; Ng said, adding that the scenario in SEA was not like that.
Another area with &#8220;unicorn opportunities&#8221; is payment-related businesses, Ng said, where space for solutions used by merchants to accept payments from consumers can still grow.
&#8220;There are a lot of companies related to payments which have not been built yet. In SEA, if you ask how people are paying each other or how they are paying for things online, you will see that this space is even wider,&#8221; he said.
Enterprise services is another area Ng pointed to as one with potential.
&#8220;A lot of companies are still using old school ways to run their internal operations,&#8221; Ng said, commenting that there are a lot of opportunities in this space.
&#8220;It just needs some localised solution; a lot of entreprises target niche (but) what you are building has to be what every company needs,&#8221; he said.
Another trend that Ng highlighted was the on-demand revolution, which is enabled by the mobile revolution that the region is seeing.
&#8220;My take is that the mobile revolution in SEA is ripe for on-demand revolution,&#8221; he said.
A sub-trend Ng pointed out is also the on-demand services driven by text short message service (SMS) in that consumers can make purchases, or access information via text messaging.
The fifth trend that Ng observed is in the media sector.
&#8220;Media is particularly local, you need to have local team, local flavour and adaptation to build a local media company,&#8221; he said, citing American media companies like Buzzfeed and Vice which SEA has none alike yet.

P2P lending, payment solutions, on-demand revolution are upcoming trends in SEA: Khailee Ng

Bring stories like this into your inbox every day.

Sign up for our newsletter - The Daily Brief

P2P lending, payment solutions, on-demand revolution are upcoming trends in SEA: Khailee Ng

Create an account to continue reading this premium story for free

Bring stories like this into your inbox every day.

Sign up for our newsletter - The Daily Brief