Shopee partners with League of Provinces to help digitize MSMEs

Shopee on Wednesday inked a partnership with the League of Provinces of the Philippines (LPP) to help digitize micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME) in the country.

Shopee’s Head of Business Intelligence Martin Yu said their goal is to upskill Filipino sellers through free training programs on how to sell their products online and then onboarding them to the e-commerce platform.

"These are grassroots. These are people who don’t know how to do this yet. A lot of our program is designed to teach. That means having workshops, get them to list online and sell online. On top of us granting them this journey is giving their products that pathway to the customer base that is the Philippines," said Yu. 

The program will be piloted in the province of Quirino, where LPP National Chairman Dax Cua serves as governor, before being implemented in other rural areas.

"Quirino is a very rural province. There’s not yet any brick-and-mortar shopping mall in Quirino. And so when we thought of partnering with Shopee, we really envisioned to leapfrog into the future. Wala man kaming shopping mall sa Quirino, we will have the first provincial virtual shopping mall," said Cua. 

Congresswoman Mindy Cua, who represents the lone district of Quirino, was also present during the launch.

She shared that local entrepreneurs from Quirino are very excited about the prospect of having a bigger market for their processed agricultural products such as ginger tea, banana chips, ube powder, and banana flour. 

"They’re very, very excited because they have a lot of products and ideas in mind that they want to produce and sell. But of course, selling it to your neighbor is not really the ideal setup. So if they have a huge customer base, it will be easier for them to sell,” she said. 

The MSME digitization program was announced during the campaign kickoff of Shopee’s 9.9 sale.

Yu said they are confident that the 9.9 shopping spree will be successful despite elevated inflation.

"If anything, I think it’s natural that people would come look on the platform. You want to compare prices. Saan makahanap ng good prices and great assortment? Our kababayans, they’re very very good at finding great deals,” he said. 

Shopee’s 9.9 Super Shopping Day sale starts from September 1 to 10.